Page 408 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The ‘Sting’ 405

Among the countries which had pressed hard for the adoption of these re­

solutions in the General Assembly on both occasions had been Algeria, Iraq,
Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Libya, Syria and Egypt. (All seven were to be equally
vigorous in their support for another resolution - concerning permanent rights
of sovereignty over natural resources-adopted by the General Assembly on 17
December 1973 while the embargo was still in force. Two clauses in this
resolution, it is worth remarking, specifically deplored ‘acts of States which use
force, armed aggression, economic coercion or any other illegal or improper

means in resolving disputes’.) Kuwait, the only signatory among the Arab oil
states of the General Agreement on Trade and Tariffs (1947), was in breach of
at least four provisions of that agreement - relating to restraints upon inter­
national trade - as a consequence of her participation in the embargo and her
allocation of oil supplies to consuming countries according to their arbitrary
classification by OAPEC as sympathetic, neutral or hostile to the Arab cause.

Needless to say, in all the tedious hours of partisan debate in the United
Nations unleashed by the Arab-Israeli war not a single member state so much
as raised the subject of these violations of that body’s own statutes by the
governments of the Arab oil countries.
No Arab government, then or since, has publicly attempted to justify the
embargo and its accompanying punitive measures in the context of inter­

national law. The one lonely attempt to do so was made by the legal adviser of
the Kuwait Fund for Arab Economic Development, Ibrahim Shihata, in an
article in the American Joumal of International Law in 1974. It was not a very
convincing presentation. According to Shihata, Arab oil production up to
October 1973 was ‘an economic sacrifice that could only be interpreted as a
political favor to the consuming countries’. The embargo and the restrictions

on production were intended to put an end to ‘the practice of doing favors for
countries whose foreign policy made them unworthy, in Arab eyes, of receiv­
ing such favors’. The categorization of concessionary agreements and contracts
between Arab governments and oil companies, not as solemn and binding legal
obligations but as ‘political favours’ is a novel concept in international law, and

a most illuminating one. It was by no means the limit, however, of Shihata’s
inventiveness. The embargo, he explained, in an equivocation to make the
s ade of Oppenheim blench, was ‘an instrument of flexible persuasion meant
on y to ensure respect for the rules of international order in the Middle East’ -
y which he meant the end of the Israeli occupation of Arab lands and the
restitution of the rights of the Palestinians. The claim might have carried
s ig t y more conviction if the plight of the Palestinians had at any time figured
prominently in the negotiations conducted by the Arab governments with the

fiLCOn|V an*eS bef°re October 1973. It is hardly necessary to say that it did not:
SLh11 ,eCt Un<^er discussion was always and exclusively money. Moreover,
&.1 ata himself, in developing his case, confounded his own argument.
scussing the decisions taken by the conference of Arab heads of state at