BAHREIN ISLAND

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XIX, Issue 64, 2 March 1929, Page 5

BAHREIN ISLAND

BRITISH GOVERNMENT’S ACTION LEAGUE'S PREROGATIVE QUESTIONED. PRESERVING PEACE IN PERSIAN GULF. [British. Official Wlreless.l (Received 2, 1.30 p.m.) Rugby, March 1. It was mentioned yesterday that copies have been circulated to members of the League ot Nations of a Note which the British Minister in Teheran has handed to the Persian Government in reference t.o the latter’s claim to sovereignty over the island of Bahrein, in the Persian Gulf. The British Note deals in detail with the contentious put forward by the Persian Government and traverses them all. The Note also lecalls that Britain fust concluded a treaty with the independent ruler of Bahrein in 1820 with the object of the suppression ot 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 and 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 was it till 1880 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 hare referred in correspondence to Article 10 of the Covenant of the League ol Nations, under which members of tne League undertake to respect and proserve 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 the 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.