Coll 6/67(4) 'Boundaries of South Eastern Arabia and Qatar.' [‎336r] (671/843)

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though not precisely, that we had now the basis of a settlement, for which he
appeared to be eager. He said that he wished to make two points at the outset.
He wished for the best relations with His Majesty’s Government. He also
wished for the best relations with the neighbour States. He would not pursue
the discussion further at this stage, but he wished to emphasise these two points.
11. I said that I quite understood the King’s inability to reply in detail
on this occasion to a proposal which 1 had only just communicated to Fuad Bey.
I took note with satisfaction of what he had said as regards his desire for good
relations with His Majesty’s Government. 1 thought it politic to say nothing at
this stage about his second point. As I had been with him by this time for about
an hour and a half and it was time for the midday prayer, I took leave.
12. On the evening of the same day, when sitting with the King before
dinner, I mentioned Sir L. Felly's journey, in connexion with the route followed
by Captain de Gaury and myself. This led the King into a positive statement
that Sir L. Felly had reached a definite agreement with his grandfather. He
said that the document had been in the possession of the family in Riyadh but
had disappeared. Fuad Bey joining in the conversation, I assured them most
definitely that there was no trace in any British archives of any agreement other
than the Fhn Mana letter, which had been published. One fact 1 said was quite
certain, namely, that Sir L. Felly, unlike myself, had come to Riyadh without
any instructions. The King said that the Felly mission and the despatch of
Ibn Mana were entirely independent. He put the date of Felly’s visit some
four years before the death of his grandfather, the Amir Feisal. (The King is
clearly wrong in his dates as well as in his facts, but there can be no doubt that he
sincerely believes that Sir L. Felly did conclude an agreement on the occasion of
his stay in Riyadh.)
13. When Fuad Bey again called next morning, the 26th November, I
referred to the conversation of the previous evening about Sir L. Felly’s visit.
I offered to give him a note of the transactions at that time, being anxious, I
explained, to dissipate any idea that His Majesty’s Government were holding
back some agreement entered into by Felly, because it was favourable to the Saudi
Government. Fuad Bey brushed aside this offer, and I did not encourage him
in a suggestion of his own that it might be possible to give him copies of the
actual correspondence. We then resumed the discussion of the frontier question,
with Captain de Gaury in attendance. It would be difficult and useless to
reproduce the whole of what passed, hut the following paragraphs represent
adequately the main course of the conversation.
14. Fuad Bey said he had come to inform me of the King’s reaction to our
proposal. He suggested that, although it was based, as I had explained, on new
principles, their application was very limited. As regards the Jebel Nakhsh area,
he referred to past correspondence between the Sheikh of Qatar and the King,
through Ibn Jiluwi, in which the sheikh had asked, more as a favour than as a
right, that the King should not claim Jebel Dukhan and the tract known as Araiq.
The King had agreed, and, that being so, the King would now be prepared to
abandon any claim to Araiq, although he, Fuad, had claimed it in earlier
discussions. (This apparently refers to the “ Ariq ” mentioned in the Saudi
memorandum of the 3rd April.) On the other hand, he pressed insistently the
Saudi claim to Jebel Nakhsh, and urged that a frontier between the two Jebels
would be a rational one based on physical features. As regards the Khor-al-
Odeid, he began by saying that my arguments were sound, but presently he went
back on the implications of this statement by reaffirming the claim to the Khor,
though not, I think, as confidently as that to the Jebel Nakhsh. He tided to make
out that our desire to maintain the continuity of the chain of States on the Gulf,
however much it might rest on a historical basis, need not now prevent us from
letting Ibn Saud have the Khor, which Fuad Bey described as economically
necessary to Saudi Arabia, and which at one moment in the subsequent conversa
tion he even described as the “ port of the Murra.” We had feared, he suggested,
the intervention of extra-Arabian Powers. We need not fear Saudi Arabia.
15. Fuad Bey’s invocation of an agreement between the Sheikh of Qatar
and the King gave me an opportunity of asserting our attitude in regard to direct
relations between the rulers in special relations with us and Ibn Saud I
reminded him of my statement of the previous day, that we were responsible for
their foreign affairs and had responsibilities towards them. The question of our
responsibilities to the Sheikh of Qatar had recently come into prominence owino