Oman — into 20th century

Press, 20 March 1982, Page 12

Oman — into 20th century

From

DEREK ROUND

in London Sultan Qaboos bin Said of Oman, in Britain on his first State visit, is one of Britain’s staunchest friends in the Middle East. He is also probably the world’s only present-day ruler who was kept a virtual prisoner by his father. Aged 41, and a Sandhurst graduate, he took over from lis father, Sultan Said bin Taimur, with British help in i 1970 coup. For about six years before .hat he had been kept shut ip in the palace at Salalah, Jman’s southern capital. An English bank manager who used to take papers in to lim was one of the few nitsiders who ever saw him luring this period.

The old sultan was a iespot who would not allow lis people to wear glasses or ■ide a bicycle without special oermission.

Radios were not allowed and there were no schools for girls and little education for boys either.

Until the sultan was overthrown, the main gate into Muscat, the capital, was shut three hours after sunset and no-one could go in or out without permission. Slavery existed in Oman until the 19605. But British ambassadors had the right to grant slaves

their freedom and give them a Certificate of Manumission declaring they were free and that no-one should interfere with their liberty. Slaves seeking Manumission had to clasp the flagpole in the embassy courtyard and were then given the certificate printed in English and Arabic.

The old sultan’s permission was always sought, and apparently never refused, before Manumission was granted. The then British Ambassador, Mr James Treadwell, a New Zealander, showed me some of the old Union Jackembossed manumission certificates in the desk of his study overlooking Muscat harbour in 1977.

“I think one of my predecessors signed the last certificate about 1963,” he said. Britain’s relations with Oman, which covers about 100,000 square miles between the Gulf of Oman and the Arabian Sea, started in the early days of British interest in Persia and India.

The British were given exclusive trading rights in 1646, and treaty in 1798 banned foreign vessels, other than British, from entering Muscat. The treaty declared that an “English gentleman of respectability shall always reside at the Port of Muscat” and that “the. friendship of the two States may remain

unshook till the end of time and till the sun and moon have finished their revolving career."'

Sultan Qaboos has maintained the close ties with Britain. British officers serve in his Armed Forces and helped him win the long guerrilla war in the southern Dhofar province adjoining South Yemen.

The twentieth century has brought his country out of the middle ages into the twentieth century. “We have much to do," he told me during an audience in the royal palace >at Salalah.

Schools and hospitals were being built and the sultan spoke of his eagerness to develop the country’s agriculture.

Aluminium fishing boats were bought from New Zealand and New Zealanders were working in cool store, fishing, and transport projects. (A Maori pilot was flying one of the sultan’s helicopters and the palace electrician came from Ashburton). Strategically important, overlooking the narrow Straits of Hormuz at the mouth of the Arabian Gulf through which the oil tankers all pass, Oman has been developing its links with the United States and is providing facilities for the United

States “rapid deployment force." . It has also established relations with China and the Chinese Ambassador, Mr Ke Hua. was one of the foreign envoys invited by the Queen to the State banquet for Sultan Qaboos at Buckingham Palace. Oman was one of the few Arab States which did not break relations with Egypt after President Sadat signed the peace treaty with Israel. Sultan Qaboos, addressing a Guildhall banquet in his honour, said his country had no desire to become involved in a confrontation between the super-Powers,but it was determined to carry out its responsibilities in protecting the flow of oil to the world through its territorial waters and in defending its national sovereignty.