Page 393 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

390 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

be, in a last desperate attempt to break the stalemate. If he did so, Saudi Arabia
could not afford to stand aloof from the battle. Inevitably the question of oil
supplies would arise, and when it did, Adham said, he was ‘deeply concerned’
that the tide of events might prove fatal to American interests in the Middle
East, even in Saudi Arabia itself. How confident, he asked, was ARAMCO

about the safety of its oil installations in Hasa, and about public security in that
province in general? ‘Good security’, he added, seemingly as an afterthought,
‘was not a matter of a lot of sophisticated equipment.’
These unsettling hints and veiled warnings were followed by a rather more
direct admonition in the last week of May when Powers and Jungers, together
with the directors responsible for Middle-Eastern operations in ARAMCO’s
parent companies-C. J. Hedlund of Esso, W. J. McQuinn of SOCAL,A C.
De Crane of Texaco and H. C. Moses of Mobil — were received by Faisal in

Geneva, where the oilmen had arrived for the negotiations with OPEC and to
discuss participation questions with Yamani. In the interval Faisal had visited
Cairo, where Sadat had importuned him for greater financial and political
support. The comparative cordiality with which Faisal had expressed his
opinions to the chairman and president of ARAMCO at the beginning of the

month was absent on this occasion. ‘Time is running out with respect to United
States interests in the Middle East,’ he told the oilmen with some asperity.
Saudi Arabia, the only friend the United Stateshad in the area, was in danger of
being isolated because the Americans had failed to give her positive support by
taking the initiative over Israel. He was not prepared to allow Saudi Arabia to
be isolated. ‘You will lose everything’, he warned Powers and Jungers, appar­
ently referring to the possibility that he would, if driven to it, revoke
ARAMCO’s concession as a means of disproving his critics’ allegations that he

was subordinating Arab to American interests. What ARAMCO must do, he
insisted, was, firstly, to inform the American public, which was being misled
by biased news reports and propaganda, where its ‘true interests’ lay in the
Middle East; and, secondly, to impress upon the United States government the
urgent need for action. ‘Time is running out,’ he repeated. ‘You may lose

everything.’
Whatever apprehension ARAMCO might feel about the situation in which

it how found itself, it could not blink the fact that it was a situation largely of its
own making. From the very first, the company had made much ado about its
identity as a Saudi company, located in Saudi Arabia and advancing $au 1
interests. It had, as related in an earlier chapter, given devoted service to e
Saudi royal house as counsellor, major-domo, intermediary and propagan ist.

In the United States it had, through the discreet exercise of patronage ani
influence in universities, foundations, learned societies, political an cu
organizations and the press, shaped the American outlook upon Saudi At• ,
her rulers, her people and her place in the international order. Less.
ARAMCO had sought to win over every American of any imp