Page 406 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The ‘Sting* 403

question of oil supplies to the Netherlands could not simply be swept under the
carpet. The Dutch themselves were annoyed at being singled out by the Arabs
for retaliatory action, and they rightly felt that they were entitled to help in
their difficulties from their EEC partners. A meeting of the foreign ministers of

the European Community was convened at Brussels on 5 November - not, it
might be said, on British or French initiative - to discuss the oil crisis and the
Netherlands’ appeal for solidarity, particularly over the sharing of oil supplies.
Ireland apart, the EEC states were also members of NATO, and the military as
distinct from the economic repercussions of the embargo and restrictions on oil
supplies should have been of no small consequence to them. Joseph Luns, the

secretary-general of NATO, had expressed the opinion three weeks earlier
that any stoppage of oil supplies to Western countries by the Arabs would be
tantamount to a ‘hostile act’. Since then oil supplies had been stopped to two
NATO members, the United States and the Netherlands. Few of their allies,
however, seemed to feel as strongly about the affront as did Luns; or, if they
did, they managed most successfully to conceal their feelings in public. Their

silence on the issue was in striking contrast to the sentiments of irritation and
indignation, born of sheer funk, which they manifested over the actions of the
United States during October in replenishing Israel’s armoury and calling a
strategic alert in response to muted sabre-rattling by the Soviet Union. Britain,
West Germany and Italy all let it be known to their senior partner in the
Atlantic Alliance that they were peeved by the use of American air bases in

their territories - bases whose prime purpose was the defence of Western
Europe - as staging-points for the American air-lift to Israel.
It was against this background that the Brussels meeting of foreign ministers
took place on 5 and 6 November. Under the circumstances it was not in the
least surprising that Sir Alec Douglas Home and the French foreign minister,
Michel Jobert, should have made it their first, indeed almost their sole,
concern to steer the attention of the conference away from the purpose for

which it had been summoned and to direct it instead into the devising of
obsequious gestures with which to appease the Arabs. Home made his inten­
tion clear on the night of 5 November when he said that

in the light of suggestions by Arab oil producers that they would impose an embargo on
those countries who agreed to furnish the Netherlands with oil, it would be much better
to see how Europe could influence a political settlement in the Middle East.

Much better’ for whom? For the Netherlands? For the EEC? Or for Britain
and France, with their sub rosa guarantees of oil supplies, given on condition
at they toed the Arab line and, by implication, persuaded the rest of the EEC
to do likewise?
Home and Jobert got their way at Brussels, despite some initial opposition
e Danes and the Germans who wanted the conference to consider what

n a ccn convened to do. The declaration issued in the names of the nine EEC