Page 379 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

MONOGRAPH ONE

The Security Council Resolution on Bahrain
The Iranian territorial claim to Bahrain, the subject of Chapter 12
of this book, has been finally relinquished as a result of a United
Nations Security Council resolution, passed unanimously on 11
May, 1970. The said resolution endorsed a fact-finding report
submitted by the United Nations Secretary-General’s Personal
Representative, Mr. Vittorio Winspeare Guicciardi, and welcomed
the findings of the report, and in particular the conclusion that:

“the overwhelming majority of the people of Bahrain wish to
gain recognition of their identity in a fully independent and
sovereign state, free to decide for itself its relations with other
states’’.1
This resolution, which amounted to a United Nations endorsement
of Bahrain’s independence, was quickly ratified by the Iranian
Majlis (Lower House) on 14 May, and by the Iranian Senate on 18
May, 1970.2 This Iranian legislative action represented a total
renunciation by Iran of her long-standing claim to Bahrain, dating
back to 1820 (the year when the Iranian claim was formally
announced).3
The background of the negotiations leading to the settlement of
the dispute and the procedure through which the United Nations
Secretary-General performed his “good offices’’ mission in the
course of resolving the said dispute will be explained below.
The earliest attempts to mediate in the settlement of the dispute
were made separately by Britain, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, shortly
after the British Government’s announcement in January 1968,
regarding the withdrawal of British military presence in the Gulf
area by the end of 1971.4
As a result of the mediatory talks held with Iranian officials in the
beginning of 1968, arrangements were made, during the last quarter
of the year, to hold informal meetings between Bahraini and Iranian
teams.
Subsequently, Bahraini and Iranian officials met, in secret, in
Switzerland, with the object of working out a mutually acceptable
1. For the text of the resolution, see U.N. Document S/RES/278 (May 11, 1970).
2. See Keesing’s Contemporary Archives 1969 - 1970, pp. 23998, 23808 C.
3. See Chapter 12 above.
4. See Keesing’s op. cit, pp. 22489A, 24492A.