Page 394 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

330
THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
requests that, subject to the minumum notice provided for in that
Agreement commencing from the date of the present Note, the Agreement
of 19th June 1961, should cease to have effect. . . ”

The British Ambassador at Kuwait, Geoffrey.Arthur, replied in a
Note of the same date confirming that
‘ ‘/his proposal is acceptable to the Government of the United Kingdom who
also hope that the relations between the two countries will continue to be
governed by the spirit of friendship and co-operation”.
In accordance with the above provisions, the Agreement of 1961
was, therefore, formally brought to an end on 13 May 1971.

Second. The Kuwait-Iraq Border Dispute
On 20 March 1973, Iraqi troops occupied the Kuwaiti police post
of al-Samtah on the Kuwaiti side of the Kuwait-Iraq undemarcated
border. However, owing to unanimous disapproval of the Iraqi
action by the Arab countries, and following Arab mediation in the
dispute, the Iraqis — who did not, in fact, admit Kuwait’s
accusation that they fired the first shot against Kuwaiti soldiers —
agreed by the end of March to withdraw their soldiers from the
Kuwaiti areas which they occupied on 20 March. This was followed
by an Iraqi offer to send a high level delegation, headed by the Iraqi
Minister of Foreign Affairs, Murtadha Abdul Baqi, with the object
of opening the question of negotiations concerning the demarcation
of the Iraq-Kuwait border.1 Simultaneously, with the arrival of the
Iraqi delegation in Kuwait on 6 April, Iraqi troops withdrew from
the Kuwaiti border area. The Iraqi Foreign Minister, who stayed in
Kuwait three days, conducted with his Kuwaiti counterpart
negotiations on the question of their boundaries. After the
conclusion of the visit of the Iraqi delegation to Kuwait, it was
reported that the discussions were exploratory and that the parties,
in fact, failed to achieve concrete results.2
For their part, the Kuwaitis were dissatisfied with the outcome of
their discussions with the Iraqis, who, reportedly, did not carry with
them full powers to reach a final settlement on the demarcation of
the Kuwait-Iraq border. In an announcement made after the end of

1. Al-Siyassah (Kuwait) 20-25 March, 1971; The Times (London), 21 March 1971.
In a leading article on the Iraq-Kuwait border incident, The Times makes the
following comment: “A natural British reaction to the news of fighting on the
Iraq-Kuwait border is to recall the 1961 emergency and to ask whether or not
Britain has any residual obligations to go to the defence of Kuwait. The answer
is no. Britain’s defence treaty with Kuwait terminated when British troops left
the Gulf in December 1971, and there is no continuing obligation of any kind
2. See Al-Siyassah (Kuwait), 9 April 1973: Al-Ahram (Cairo), 9 April 1973; Arab
Report and Record, (1973), pp. 154, 157.