‘Memorandum respecting the frontier between Mohammerah and Turkey.’ [‎38v] (76/82)

ArPENDIX (G).
Sir Stratford Canning to Lord Pa — 20.)
(No. 172.)
My Lord, Constantinople, May 30, 1850.
THE conference, which in concert with the Kussian envoy, I held with the Grand
Vizier and Aali Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. at Batta An extra allowance of pay granted to soldiers involved in special field service or to public servants on special duty. Liman on the 21st instant, resulted, with respect to
Mohammerah, in a promise on the part of the Turkish Ministers that our opinions
and arguments should he fully suhmitted to the council, and, with respect to Kotur,
Tamban, and other disputed points of the frontier not specified in the Treaty of
Erzeroum, that no further attempt at occupation, unprovoked by any aggressive
movement of the Persians, should be made under the Porte's authority until the
commissioners had visited those parts of the line and taken the respective claims into
consideration.
The arguments used by M. Titow and myself in support of the line recommended
by the mediating commissioners, as the fairest demarcation for Mohammerah and its
neighbourhood, were principally derived from the true intent and wording ot the
second article of the treaty, from the mutual interest of the parties when rightly
understood, and from the useless, not to say mischievous, complications involved in the
arrangement proposed under his instructions by Dervish Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. .
The Ottoman Ministers grounded their preference for that arrangement on the
terms of the Porte's explanatory note accepted, as they reminded us, before the
exchange of the ratifications, not only Lord Cowley and M. Oustinof, but also by the
Persian plenipotentiary, who was here. They represented the note in question as
containing certain conditions on which alone the Sultan had consented to ratify the
Treaty of Erzeroum, and they persisted in giving to that part of the note which regards
Mohammerah an interpretation calculated to bear them out in requiring the adoption
of their commissioner's line.
Though it does not appear that the Persian plenipotentiary had jmy express
authority to accept the note, there is no denying that it was accepted by the British
and Russian representatives, and that the terms of it, taken literally, imply a limitation
which it is equally difficult to reject on clear grounds of right or to admit with any
degree of satisfaction.
If the Turkish line were established there would be three lines of frontier, running
almost parallel to each other, from the sea to the llati'ar Canal—an absurdity which
never could have been contemplated by those who sought to simpliiy the relations of
Turkey with Persia and to diminish the chances of fresh collision between them. Such au
arrangement also stands in contradistinction with that clause of the second article of the
treaty which extends the future acknowledged territory of Persia to other portions of
the eastern coast of the Shatt-el-Arab, besides those which are included in the island
of Khizr and t.ie town of Mohammerah.
In this equivocal and contradictory state of things it was not to be expected
that the Turkish Ministers would give way at once, and it is doubtful whether they
will be induced to give way at all without a reference to the mediating Courts. Care
has been taken to divert them from any expectations which they may possibly
entertain of undoing the treaty altogether and opening a door for the reconsideration
of its territorial arrangements. They have been told that a difference of opinion
as to one clause of a ratified treaty can hardly be allowed to vitiate the whole
body of the instrument, however the disputed point may be shown to be a just object
of discussion and of better defined settlement; that the note appealed to by them,
being of an explanatory character, could not be supposed to change the very nature of
the treaty, in one of its essential parts, and to render its execution incompatible with
the terms of the original stipulations ; or, if such had been the purpose of those who
framed it, that at least so extraordinary and unexpected an intention should have been
frankly declared and unequivocally expressed.
In reply to a joint application from the Russian envoy and myself, it was stated
to-day by Aali Pasha An Ottoman title used after the names of certain provincial governors, high-ranking officials and military commanders. that the council had not yet had time to deliberate on the
subject of the conlerence, and the Sultan's approaching absence from his capital
will come in aid of His Majesty's personal disinclination to accept our inter
pretation of the treaty, and probably contribute to postpone a final decision of the
question.
* This refers to the Explanatory Note of April 26, 1847, addressed to the Porte by the Mediating
Representatives at Constantinople, giving explanations and assurances relative to certain stipulations of the
Treaty of Erzeroum.