Page 413 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

4io Arabia, the Gulf and the West

suggestions’, he exclaimed indignantly, ‘but they only talked to us about
chaotic market conditions!’ Quite understandably, for someone wholly

absorbed in his portrayal of a man suffering the keenest umbrage, Amuzegar
overlooked the fact that the chaotic conditions in the market had been caused
not only by the Arab embargo and production cuts but also by OPEC’s own
action at Kuwait on 16 October in setting out a host of variables which were to
be used in the calculation of posted prices.

It was decided at Vienna to hold an extraordinary conference of OPEC in a
month’s time, when the level of oil prices would be looked at again in the light
of current market conditions. Meanwhile, Yamani and the Algerian oil
minister, Belaid Abdessalem, were to undertake a tour of Europe’s capitals
with the ostensible object (which had been agreed at the OAPEC meeting in
Kuwait on 4-5 November) of explaining the Arab position on oil to the EEC

governments. Less obtrusively, they were to size up the chances of Europe’s
acquiescing in a further price rise. The arrival of the two ministers in
Copenhagen, their first stop, coincided with a statement by the American
secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, on 21 November that the United States

would have to consider counter-measures if the Arab boycott continued for too
long. Angered by this impiety, Yamani appeared on Danish television to
denounce the United States and to say that the Arabs would respond to such
provocation by reducing their oil production by 80 per cent. Saudi Arabia
would not suffer any discomfort by doing so, he asserted, because with
production at 20 per cent of capacity she would get $20 a barrel for her oil. ‘It is

the law of supply and demand.’
Yamani also had a word of warning for the industrial nations of the free
world. ‘I don’t know to what extent Europe and Japan will get together to join
the Americans in any kind of measures, because your whole economy will
definitely collapse all of a sudden. If the Americans are thinking of a military

action, this is a possibility, but this is suicide. There are some sensitive areas in
the oilfields in Saudi Arabia which will be blown up.’ Questioned the next day
about the seriousness of this threat, Yamani hurriedly backed away from it,
saying, ‘That was not a threat.’ His Kuwaiti counterpart, Atiqi, who was at t e
time gracing Paris with his presence, scorned such equivocation. The Ara s,
he said, were ready to paralyse the economy of the Western world to secure
their aims in the Middle East. ‘Europe will suffer terribly if it does not he P“s’

And Saudi Arabia’s representative at the United Nations, Jaml *r0°
whose oratorical incontinence had become a legend, demanded in t e en
Assembly on 28 November that Kissinger explain the ‘sneaky, YP0^1
terminology’ of his allusions to counter-measures. ‘What does he ™
counter-measures?’ Baroody fulminated. ‘Why doesn’t he spell them out hkea

man of the third part of the twentieth century?’ inllifications which
This minor passage of arms was soon forgotten amid th I Froin
attended Yamani’s and Abdessalem’s progress through Eur p •