UNITED NATIONS, Nov 7 (KUNA) -- Saudi Arabia complained to Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon about Iran's infringements of the off-shore oil facilities in the eastern region of the Kingdom, and said it reserves the right to retaliate in order to protect its waters and oil installations.
In a letter to Ban released on Wednesday, Saudi Ambassador Abdallah Al-Mouallimi recalled that last July an Iranian helicopter hovered several times over oil rig sites in the Hasba field, and on another occasion two Iranian military launches intercepted and stopped a vessel belonging to a Saudi Aramco contractor in the Arabia field area.
"The Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia reserves its right to take any action it deems fit in order to protect its waters and oil installations, and holds the Iranian authorities fully responsible for all possible consequences," he warned.
He stated that the Saudi Foreign Ministry already addressed a letter in this regard to the Iranian Foreign Ministry demanding that such incidents will not be repeated.
"Those two fields are Saudi Arabian off-shore fields, as set forth in the agreement concluded between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and the Islamic Republic of Iran in 1968, in which the line demarcating the border between the two countries' off-shore fields is delineated," Al-Mouallimi stressed in his letter.
He asked Ban to circulate the Saudi protest letter among Member States and to publish it in the forthcoming issue of the Law of the Sea Bulletin.(End) sj.rk KUNA 071841 Nov 12NNNN