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The Masquerade 369

cost, weighed more heavily than the need to stand up to OPEC on a vital and
fundamental matter affecting not only their own welfare but that of the entire
Western world as well. As events were to prove, it was a most short-sighted
view to take.
By late May 1972 the major oil companies had conceded the principle of 20
per cent participation to most of the Arab oil-producing states of the Gulf. The
concession had not been made without the companies having been subjected to
threats, particularly from Saudi Arabia, of compulsory acquisition of majority
shareholdings if the companies were unco-operative. That the threats were not
necessarily idle was demonstrated at the eighth Arab Petroleum Congress in

Algiers at the end of May, which was attended by all the members of the
Organization of Arab Petroleum Exporting Countries. Two months earlier,
Iraq, Syria and Egypt had been admitted to membership of O APEC, the latter
pair by means of a revision of membership requirements. With the recruitment
of Iraq and Syria to its ranks, OAPEC’s character as a predominantly political
organization was confirmed, though not in the way that its founders, Saudi
Arabia, Kuwait and pre-revolutionary Libya, had originally intended. It was
now, and would be increasingly, a militant and radical body. As its bridal gift
or membership fee, Iraq made a contribution of truly Libyan proportions - the
nationalization of the Iraq Petroleum Company. The sour and fretful state of

relations between the company and the Iraqi government over the preceding
decade has already been mentioned. At the time of the Tehran negotiations in
January 1971 the Iraqi oil minister, Saadun al-Hammadi, had indicated that a
settlement of differences might be expected as a consequence of the ‘atmos­
phere of mutual trust’ which had developed at Tehran between the company
negotiators and the Gulf committee of OPEC. His purpose in saying so, it soon
transpired, was simply to induce the company negotiators to concede OPEC’s
demands at Tehran by dangling before them the prospect of better times for
I PC in Iraq. Once the Tehran agreement had been signed, the Baghdad
government reverted to its customary disagreeable habits.
IPC had accepted the principle of 25 per cent participation - an advance of 5

per cent on OPEC’s figure-in March 1972, but this was not good enough for
the Iraqis. Not only had they grown very fierce as a result of the treaty of
friendship they had concluded with the Soviet Union in April, but they were
further emboldened by the discreet encouragement they were receiving from
die French government in their dispute with IPC. The conduct of the French
in this instance - CFP, after all, was one of the major partners in IPC - defies
reason, especially in a people for whom reason is said to be the supreme virtue
( Ce qui n’est pas logique n’est pas frangais’). Apparently undeterred by its
experience in Algeria, the French government had set out to conclude an
understanding with the Iraqis which would assure France of a stable supply of
oil for years to come. The Iraqis were naturally delighted by the readiness of
the French to place their necks once more in a noose of Algerian design, and to