A Treaty of friendship and alliance between the Government of Mongolia and Tibet was signed on February 2,[1] 1913, at Urga (now Ulaanbaatar). However, there have been doubts about the authority of the Tibetan signatories to conclude such a treaty, and therefore about whether it constitutes a valid contract.[2]
Occasionally, the mere existence of the treaty has been put into doubt, But its text in Mongolian language has been published by the Mongolian Academy of Sciences in 1982,[3] and in 2007 an original copy in Tibetan language and script surfaced from Mongolian archives.[4]
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After the fall of the Qing Dynasty in 1911, both Tibet and Mongolia declared their formal independence under lamaist heads of states, both had had no success in gaining official recognition from the Republic of China. In the treaty, Mongolia and Tibet declared mutual recognition and allegiance. The Mongolian representatives signing the treaty were foreign minister Da Lama Ravdan and General Manlaibaatar Damdinsüren. The Tibetan representatives who signed this document were Agvan Dorjiev, a Buryat, i.e. citizen of Russia, Chijamts, and Gendun-Galsan a Tibetan citizen. There exist some doubts to the validity of this treaty: the 13th Dalai Lama denied that he had authorized Dorjiev to negotiate a treaty with Mongolia. More importantly, neither the cleric nor the Tibetan government appeared to have ever ratified the treaty.[5] The Russian government maintained that, as a Russian subject, Dorjiev could not possibly act in a diplomatic capacity on behalf of the Dalai Lama.[6] According to the 14th Dalai Lama, this treaty was signed under the reign of the 13th Dalai Lama.[7]
In any case, the independence of both Tibet and Mongolia continued not to be recognized by most other powers, which continued to recognize at least the suzerainty of the Republic of China over these areas. Even Russia and the UK were more comfortable with formally recognizing China's suzerainty and keeping an ambivalent position towards Mongolia and Tibet's independence. In addition, there was a concern among the Western powers (again particularly Russia and UK) that recognizing Tibetan or Mongolian independence would allow those areas to come under the other power's influence, respectively, a situation which all concerned believed to be worse than a situation in which those areas were nominally under the control of a weak China.
News of the treaty aroused considerable suspicion amongst the British negotiators at the Simla Convention, who feared that Russia might use the treaty to gain influence on Tibetan matters.[5] While China ultimately did not sign the Simla Convention,[8][9] a similar treaty, the tripartite Treaty of Kyakhta, was signed by Mongolia, the Republic of China and Russia on 25 May 1915.[10] The agreement affirmed Mongolia's complete autonomy in internal matters and Russian privileges in Mongolia, at the same time formally recognized China's suzerainty over the country.[11]