Percy Cox was engrossed with events in Europe. Among his other achievements while at Bushire was the establishment of the state of Kuwait as an autonomous kaza within the Ottoman Empire by the Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913, where he improved relations with local ruler, Mubarak, by opening negotiations with Ibn Saud. The Turks signed a treaty in London on July 29, 1913 concerning Royal Navy patrols in the Persian Gulf littoral, when Cox met then at the Port of Uqair on 15 December 1913. Cox noted their "intractability" and also warned the Foreign and Commonwealth Office about Ibn Saud; the "increased authority
Anglo-Ottoman Convention of 1913 intervene in matters of the Gulf, of which the British desired to retain a monopoly. The Ottomans were willing to drop all claims to Bahrain, in which they had never been able to maintain anything but a symbolic role, but not Qatar. As a question of sovereignty, the Ottomans argued that the empire had always exercised effective sovereignty over the peninsula and could not justify the abandonment of territory which it had never formally renounced. Yet under considerable pressure it renounced claims to both (Articles 11 & 13) and a blue line was established to define the territorial limits of