Page 347 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

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SUBMARINE BOUNDARIES 283
The fact that international law does not accept any unilateral exten­
sion of the territorial sea is confirmed by A. H. Dean who states:
Although, within the limits of international law, each State has a right to
legislate with respect to its own territory, a unilateral extension by muni­
cipal law of the limits of its territorial sea into the high seas . . . will not be
valid in international law unless and until it is recognised by other States.
. . . either by general custom and assent, or by a series of treaties or multi­
lateral conventions.1
As a multilateral treaty, the Geneva Convention on the Territorial
Sea and the Contiguous Zone which was adopted on 27 April 19582
fails to define a definite breadth of the territorial sea. The States parties
to the Convention disagreed on the adoption of one uniform definition
of the territorial sea.3 In view of these uncertainties about the breadth
of the territorial sea, this aspect of the law of the sea may rightly be
described, in Professor Riesenfeld’s words as ‘one of the most unsatis­
factory portions of international law’.4
In connection with the Arabian Gulf region, the non-agreement
among its littoral States upon a uniform definition of the breadth
of their territorial seas adds yet another obstacle in the way of reaching
agreement on the delimitation of their submarine boundaries. In the
case of the littoral States of Iran, Iraq and Saudi Arabia, they have
already uniformly extended their territorial seas to twelve miles. It
may be argued that as long as the extension by these States of their
territorial seas beyond the three-mile limit has not been recognised
by other maritime States or adopted in a multilateral convention, it
could be opposed by those maritime States which still conform to the
internationally accepted standard on the limit of the territorial sea.5
1 Dean, A. H., ‘The Second Conference on the Law of the Sea: The Fight for
Freedom of the Sea’, A.J.I.L., 54 (1960), p. 760.
2 See above, p. 282, n. 2.
3 During the discussions in the second Geneva Conference on the Territorial
Sea, the Afro-Asian countries submitted a proposal which stipulated that a State
‘should have the right to fix the breadth of its territorial sea up to a limit of 12
miles’. But this proposal was defeated by 39 votes to 36 with 13 abstentions. It was
clear from the discussions of the Conferences on the Territorial Sea that major
maritime nations held to the 3-mile rule, while the smaller coastal nations sought
to extend their sovereignty seaward to 12 miles or more. At this second Con­
ference held on 26 April 1960, the U.S.-Canadian proposal, claiming ‘a six-mile
territorial sea and an additional six-mile fishing zone’ failed, by one vote, ‘to win
the two-thirds majority needed for its adoption’. For fuller reports on the 1960
Conference on the Law of the Sea, see The Times, 14,20 April 1960; Herald Tribune,
N.Y., 5 May 1960; Dean, A. H., ‘The Second Conference on the Law of the
Sea . . .’, A.J.I.L., 54 (1960), pp. 751-69.
4 Quotation from Riesenfeld, S. A., Protection of Coastal Fisheries Under Inter­
national Law (1942), p. ix, by Boggs, S. W., ‘Delimitation of Seaward Areas Under
National Jurisdiction’, A.J.I.L., 45 (1951), p. 240.
“Sec Dean, A. H. ‘The Second Geneva Conference on the Law of the Sea:
the Fight for Freedom of the Sea’, A.J.I.L., 54 (1960), p. 769.