IOR/L/PS/10/1237/2

The part concerns the interpretation of Article 3 of the first Protocol signed at Oqair [Al-ʻUqayr] (also referred to as Ojair, and in various other spellings, including Oquair in the file title) on 2 December 1922, between the governments of Iraq and Najd, which provided that the vicinity of the border between the two states should not be used for any military purpose, such as building forts or concentrating troops.

The correspondence arose in the light of discussions in 1928 between Sir Gilbert Falkingham Clayton and Ibn Saud [‘Abd al-‘Azīz bin ‘Abd al-Raḥmān bin Fayṣal Āl Sa‘ūd] concerning the frontier between Iraq and Najd. Ibn Saud's emphasis on special interpretations of the agreements at Muhammerah [Khorramshahr] and Oqair in 1922, and the fact that there was no official record of the talks at Oqair led the British Government to examine what other evidence existed.

The part includes copies of the agreements and related correspondence, dated 1922-23; correspondence concerning the Oqair conference from Major Harold Richard Patrick Dickson, and Major-General Sir Percy Zachariah Cox, who was High Commissioner for Iraq at the time; an interpretation by a British official of the account of the Oqair meeting given in a book entitled 'Ibn Sa'ud of Arabia' [Ibn Sa'oud of Arabia] by Amin Rihani [Ameen Fares Rihani] (folios 696-698); and correspondence from the Colonial Office, and the High Commissioner for Iraq.