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(D) Position in regard to the General International System and the League
of Nations.
206. According to a Mecca newspaper, two Saudi delegates are to attend
the International Postal Conference to be held in the Argentine in x\pril 1939,
but the Saudi Government refused invitations to send representatives to the
conference held at Oxford in September by the International Federation for
Documentation, or to a conference to consider the possibility of reaching an
agreement on the exemption of liquid fuel and lubricants used in air traffic.
207. The well-known hostility of the Saudi Government to certain clauses
of the 1926 Sanitary Convention was not diminished when they learned that
the Government of Egypt desired to take over the duties of the International
Quarantine Board ; and they requested the sympathy and support of His Majesty’s
Government in an attempt to secure revision of the clauses to which they took
exception, and seemed to think that their object might be achieved, or at least
their grievances examined, at the conference which had been convened to meet
in Paris in October to consider the transfer of the duties of the Quarantine
Board to the Egyptian Government. His Majesty’s Government devoted much
thought to the devising of means by which some satisfaction might be given
to the Saudi Government, at least in form, and eventually an arrangement was
made by which the matter was put down for examination at the meeting of the
Pilgrimage Commission in Paris in May 1939. In a letter from the Eastern
Department of the Foreign Office to the Saudi Minister in London, dated the
28th September, there appears this passage:—
“ Before May His Majesty’s Government and the Saudi Arabian Govern
ment could consider together what changes in the convention, designed to
give effect to the wishes of the Saudi Arabian Government, would, in fact,
be practicable, and it is to be hoped that they might be able to agree upon
a number of draft amendments. The Saudi Arabian representative at the
Pilgrimage Commission could, in due course, put forward these draft amend
ments as the considered proposals of the Saudi Arabian Government and the
ETiited Kingdom representative would support them.”
An enclosure to this letter attempted to explain for the information of the
Saudi Government that the articles of the convention to which they take exception
cast no reflection on the Hejaz, and that the Saudi Arabian Government would
not necessarily be better off if these articles were abolished, since they prescribe
maximum measures whereas in their absence each Government would be free to
take such action as seemed to it necessary at the moment.
208. The League of Nations has ceased to interest Ibn Sand. He never
even refers to it now.
(E) Treaties.
209. No important international instruments were signed by Saudi Arabia
during 1938. The only treaties of which the legation have a record are the
subidiary agreements with Iraq which have already been mentioned in
paragraph 25, viz. :—
With—
Place and
Date of
Signature.
Nature and Subject.
Place and
Date of
Exchange of
Ratifications.
Date of
Entry into
Force.
Iraq
Bagdad,
May 19, 1988
Provisional agreement regarding
the administration of Neutral
Zone on the frontier between
Iraq and Saudi Arabia
May 19, 1938
Iraq
Bagdad,
May 19, 1938
Provisional agreement regulating
grazing between Iraq and Saudi
Arabia
May 19, 1938
Iraq
Bagdad,
May 19, 1938
Provisional agreement regarding
nationality of border tribes
-
May 19, 1938