Page 396 - The Arabian Gulf States_Neat

332 THE LEGAL STATUS OF THE ARABIAN GULF STATES
insisted that the ownership of the two islands was not a subject of
dispute but that the basic issue was the demarcation of the
Kuwait-iraq land boundary.1 In his view, the definition of the
boundary line between the two countries was already approved by
two authoritative documents: (a) The Exchange of Letters of 21
July-10 August 1932, between the then Prime Minister of Iraq, Nuri
Pasha al-Said, and the former Ruler of Kuwait, Shaikh Ahmad
Al-Sabah.2 (b) The Official Agreed Minutes of 4 October 1963,
signed by the present Kuwaiti Amir, Shaikh Sabah al-Salim, who
was then acting in his capacity as a Prime Minister, and the present
1. Al-Siyassah, 3. Al-Siyassah, op. cit; al-Hayat, op. cit.
2. For the contents of the Exchange of Letters of 1932 on the Iraq-Kuwait
boundaries, see above, chapter 5, p. 256 and Note (4) thereof. And see Appendix
No. 14.
It should be noted that the 1932 Exchange of Letters were never accepted by
the Iraqi authorities as a basis for the demarcation of Iraq’s boundaries with
Kuwait, in spite of persistent Kuwaiti requests to do so during the last 40 years.
The official records of negotiations on this problem show that on 7 October
1940, nearly 8 years after the 1932 Exchange of Letters, the British Embassy in
Baghdad addressed, on behalf of Kuwait, a letter to the then Iraqi Prime
Minister, Nuri al-Said, inviting him to make the necessary arrangements for the
demarcation of the Kuwait-iraq boundaries, in accordance with the 1932
concord. To this request, the Iraqi Foreign Ministry replied on 21 November
1940, suggesting that, due to the interconnection between the Iraqi-Saudi Arabia
boundaries and the Iraq-Kuwait border problems, the demarcation of Iraq’s
border with Kuwait should, therefore, be deferred pending the settlement of the
whole question of Iraq’s boundaries, with both Saudi Arabia and Kuwait. The
official records of this problem also reveal the following exchange of views:
(a) On 18 December 1951, the British Embassy at Baghdad sent a Note to the
Iraqi Foreign Ministry inviting it to make arrangements for the demarcation of
the Kuwait-iraq boundaries. The Iraqi Foreign Ministry replied to this Note on
26 May 1952, stating that "in view of the fact that Iraq intends to build the port of
Umm Qasr, she wishes to have possession of the island of Warbah, before
agreeing to the demarcation of the Iraq-Kuwait boundaries’’.
This claim to the island of Warbah is contrary to the 1932 concord which
establishes Kuwait’s ownership of the islands of Warbah and Bubiyan.
(b) In 1954, Iraq offered to provide Kuwait with piped sweet water from Shatt
al-Arab on the condition that Kuwait agreed to transfer Warbah island and a
coastal area of 4 kilometers, south of the present boundary, to Iraq so that the
latter could have enough territory to develop Umm-Qasr port.
During 1954-56, discussions on the possibility of leasing Warbah and the
coastal area to Iraq in return for supplying Kuwait with fresh water from Shatt
al-Arab was discussed but no concrete results were reached.
(c) On 10 March 1957, the then Ruler of Kuwait formally informed the Iraqi
authorities that the settlement of the Kuwait-iraq boundary issue was a
pre-requisite for any agreement on the water supply to Kuwait.
(d) On 4 October 1963, a Kuwaiti delegation, who, visited Iraq after the fall
of the regime of Abd al-Karim Qasim, signed with the Iraqi Government an
Agreed Minutes, in which Iraq expressly recognised the independence ot
Kuwait on the basis of the boundaries attributed to her in the 1932 concord.