Page 414 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The ‘Sting’ 411

Copenhagen, where they had diplomatically refrained from suggesting that
Denmark should be black-listed for its open support of the Netherlands, they
went on to Paris and London. ‘Paris is our friend number one and London our
friend number two,’ Yamani had announced expansively before he left Vienna,

adding, by way of explanation, ‘Any country to be qualified as a friendly
country must assist in a very significant manner the Arab cause.’ In Paris he
and Abdessalem were banqueted at the Crillon by senior ministers of the
French government, and in London they were lunched by the foreign secretary
in the state dining-room at Lancaster House. Everywhere ministers and func­
tionaries scurried to attend upon them, to court their favour and seek their

approbation. The press and the luminaries of television and radio hung upon
their slightest word, their most inadvertent aside or subtlest inflexion, even the
occasional weighty pause - all of which were breathlessly transmitted, with
instantaneous oracular embellishments, to the anxious masses, mute and
perplexed spectators of the hubbub and the feting. It was a spectacle worthy to
be captured on a vast and crowded canvas in the style of Tiepolo, depicting a
throng of gorgeously attired dignitaries all pressing forward with beseeching

gestures towards two proud figures standing sternly aloof, the whole tableau
perhaps to be grandly entitled ‘The Plenipotentiaries of Arabia and Mauretania
receiving the submission of Britain and Gaul’.
Recrossing the Channel, Yamani and Abdessalem made for Brussels, where,
Yamani had let it be known, they would be prepared to entertain any petition

the Dutch might make for the restoration of oil supplies from Arab sources.
However, he stipulated, if the Dutch wanted to be taken off the black-list, they
would have ‘to take a very clear-cut position condemning Israeli occupation of
Arab ground and demand complete withdrawal from all Arab territory’.
Furthermore, they would have to make some ‘special gesture to repair the
damage done’ by their ‘hostile action’ against the Arabs in the early days of the

war. On 1 December the Dutch minister of economic affairs, Ruud Lubbers,
had a meeting with Yamani and Abdessalem. He refused to concede their
demands and said that a ‘special gesture’ was out of the question. He told them
that although the Netherlands had endorsed the EEC declaration of 6
November, the endorsement had caused his government ‘some trouble and

pain to achieve’. ‘Holland’s position’, he said flatly, ‘is the same now as it was
on that occasion.’ After the heady excitements of Paris and London the Dutch
minister’s uncompromising words came as something of an unpleasant sur­
prise to the two envoys. Yamani suddenly complained of feeling unwell and
retired to his hotel bed.
While he and Abdessalem had been tripping gaily through Europe the Arab
eads of state had been in conference at Algiers. There were a few absentees.
ing Husain of Jordan did not attend, nor did President Ahmad Hasan al-Bakr

0 Iraq, who was disgusted with Egypt’s acceptance of a cease-fire in the war.
uammar Qaddafi also boycotted the conference, ostensibly for the same