Kuwait MPs urged to ratify GCC security treaty

Manama: Kuwait’s foreign ministry undersecretary has urged his country’s lawmakers to approve the Gulf security treaty when it is submitted to them.

“The treaty will be presented to the parliament and we hope that the MPs will endorse it,” Khalid Al Jarallah said. “We believe that this treaty will be a very important and highly influential and effective framework to confront security challenges. We do hope the Kuwaiti parliament will pass it because all the other Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have endorsed it and everybody is now waiting for Kuwait to ratify it so that it can be put into practice,” the official said, quoted by local daily Al Qabas on Wednesday.

Al Jarallah, who was attending a reception hosted by the Slovakian embassy to mark its national day, was speaking one day after Saudi Arabia’s cabinet said that it had approved the Gulf security pact upon a recommendation from the Shura (Consultative Council).

“There are those who have argued that there was a conflict between the security treaty and the Kuwaiti constitution, but in my appreciation, I see that the first article in the treaty stipulates that if there is a conflict between the provisions of the agreement and the provisions of the constitution, the priority will be for the provisions of the Constitution, and what is stated in this article applies to all the terms of the treaty,” Al Jarallah said.

“We hope that this agreement will have the support of the deputies when it is presented to them,” he said.

The treaty, an amended version of the Gulf security pact first announced at the Manama Summit in December 1994, was endorsed at the GCC summit in Bahrain in December.

Bahrain’s Interior Minister Shaikh Rashid Bin Abdullah Al Khalifa in January said that the treaty aimed “to broaden cooperation, to unify and integrate security measures and to exchange expertise, potential and information in a manner that helps the concerned security agencies to assume their tasks according to the highest standards”.

“Gulf security cooperation is based on the premise that whatever affects one GCC country affects all the other member states,” he said.

The GCC was established in Abu Dhabi in 1981 by Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the UAE.