BAHREIN ISLAND

Dominion, Volume 22, Issue 136, 5 March 1929, Page 3

BAHREIN ISLAND

PERSIAN CLAIMS NOT RECOGNISED (British Official Wireless.) Rugby, March 1. Copies have been circulated to members of the League of Nations of U Note which the British Minister in Teheran has handed to the Persian Government in reference to the latter’s claim to sovereignty over the Island; of Bahrein in the Persian Gulf. The British Note deals in detail with the contentions put forward by the Persian Government and traverses them all. The Note also recalls that Britain first concluded a Treaty with the independent ruler of Bahrein in 1820, with the object of the suppression of piracy and the maintenance of peace in the Gulf. The British Government subsequently concluded other treaties with the Sheik of Bahrein as an independent ruler who had consistently refused to admit Persian and other claims to sovereignty over his Dominions. The British Government during that time refused to accede to the Sheik’s request that Bahrein should be incorporated in the British Dominions. It was not until the Treaty of 1861 that the British Government, in return for the Sheik’s undertaking to abstain from maritime aggression, war, and piracy, assured him in return of their support against similar aggression, nor till 18S0 .and 1892 that they undertook unqualified liability for the foreign relations of that ruler under which he has now invoked their assistance in repelling what he not unnaturally regards as a wholly unprovoked attempt on his independence by a foreign Government. The Note expresses surprise that the Persian Government should have referred in its correspondence to Article 10 of the Covenant of the League of Nations, under which members of the League undertake to respect and preserve as against external aggression the territorial integrity and existing political independence of all members of the League, and that they should seemingly imagine that the terms of this Article lay an obligation on members of the League to support Persian pretensions to an island which is separated from Persia by the whole width of the Persian Gulf, and over which Persia has exercised no authority for 145 years.