Letter to Mohammed Salman, the Oil Minister of Iraq

Rouhani, Fuad, first Secretary General of OPEC (1907-2004). Typescript letter.

Tehran, 17. III. 1961.

4to. 4 pp. on 4 ff. On headed stationery.

 2,800.00

Draft of a letter to Mohammed Salman, the Oil Minister of Iraq, about the administration of Abadan port, claimed both by Iran and Iraq, reflecting his concern with achieving consent in political matters as well as matters of the oil industry: "The Port of Abadan lies incontestably within the jurisdiction of Iran, and when the Iranian Government takes steps to provide its own harbourmasters in that Port it is doing nothing else than exercising a normal function of administration within its own waters. The past history of this question, and the fact that the Port of Basra has supplied harbourmasters for the Port of Abadan for some time [...] could not possibly deprive Iran of its right as an independent State to exercise sover[e]ignty over its territory. And yet this is what the attitude of your Government towards this question involves [...] If we cannot remove a difference of this simple nature, in which Iran is so evidently in the right; if the Iranian people are to be told that Iraq wishes to prevent Iran from administering the Port of Abadan in the same manner as Iraq administers, for instance, the Port of Basra; if the surprising statement of General Shawi that this matter concerns not the Iranian State but the Oil Consortium (which is foreign to both of us) is to be represented as the serious view of your Government, then how can we hope ever to achieve that harmony and unity of views and effective position on matters of joint importance, for example in relation ot OPEC, which is the first condition of success in the difficult common tasks which lie ahead of us? [...]".

With several corrections; the header "private and confidential" deleted.