asked Her Majesty's Government:

What procedure was followed in (a) delineating, and (b) publishing the boundary line between Iraqi and Iranian territorial waters in the North Arabian Gulf. [HL3155]

The present boundary between Iran and Iraq was originally agreed in the Constantinople Protocol of 17 November 1913. A further treaty was agreed in 1937 which reaffirmed the boundary in the Shatt al-Arab as established by the Constantinople Protocol. On 6 March 1975 a joint communiqué was issued in Algiers by Iran and Iraq relative to the resolution of the problems of their common boundary as follows: to undertake the final demarcation of their land boundaries on the basis of the Constantinople Protocol of 1913; and to delimit their river boundary according to the thalweg (deep water channel) line. Following World War II, problems continued along the boundary and Iran was keen to establish the actual position of the thalweg in the Shatt al-Arab. This process became a Treaty Relating to the State Boundary and Good-Neighbourliness between Iran and Iraq with three protocols and their annexes and was signed in Baghdad on 13 June 1975. The protocol relating to the river boundary included an annex of four admiralty charts of the Shatt al-Arab containing co-ordinates of the thalweg boundary. The boundary as agreed in these treaties was effectively ignored by Iraq during the Iran/Iraq war, but was reinstated in 1990. The boundary as defined in the 1975 treaty is therefore the present ratified boundary between Iran and Iraq and is depicted on our charts and maps.