Page 416 - Arabia the Gulf and the West

The ‘Sting’ 413

an agreement, the implementation of which was to be guaranteed by the

United States, providing for an Israeli withdrawal from Arab territories
occupied in 1967 - ‘including first and foremost Jerusalem’, a proviso expressly
inserted at the insistence of Faisal ibn Abdul Aziz. The withdrawal was to
proceed according to a strict timetable, and the rate at which oil production
would be restored to its previous levels would be geared to the progressive

stages of the withdrawal.
All this was announced largely with an eye to the impending meeting of
heads of government of the EEC due to take place at Copenhagen on 14
December. Although Europe had continued to display subservience to Arab
wishes, there was always a faint chance that one or other of its governments
might begin to sicken of the bread of servility and start behaving like a
responsible power. The possibility agitated more than one Arab leader, and

prompted an hysterical outburst from the president of Algeria, Houari
Boumedienne, in the first week of December. ‘If the West tries to be arrogant
or to act by force,’ he raved,

it will be subjected to a catastrophe; every single oil well will be set on fire. All the
pipelines will be destroyed and the West will pay for it. . . . It takes only a few of our
fedayeen to trigger a world catastrophe if the West gets too headstrong.

The Algerian president’s philippic emboldened the ineffable Abdur Rahman
al-Atiqi of Kuwait to pronounce his own fearsome malediction upon the West
the following week. Categorizing Israel as ‘a spoilt child’ whom ‘it was the

West’s duty to punish’, he upbraided Western Europe and Japan for failing to
come down firmly on the side of the Arabs.

These countries have been content until now to throw us kisses from afar. .. . We want a
clear attitude and real co-operation. ... If the West does not modify its attitude, it must
expect the worst.... We will destroy everything in a short time if anyone tries to occupy
our oil wells.

Atiqi knew full well, of course, that he was on safe ground in ranting thus. Only

a few days earlier the ruler of Kuwait had received an impassioned plea from
the British prime minister, now confronted with a national coalminers’ strike,
for a larger allocation of oil. It was hardly likely that the government of Edward
Heath would have contemplated a desperate coup de main against the oil wells
of Arabia. It was just not its style, then or at any time.
Most of this rodomontade in the first fortnight of December - there was

more of it gushing forth from other Arab states - was designed, as indicated
already, to soften up the EEC governments before the Copenhagen confer­

ence. There was little need for it: the European spirit was still palsied, despite
1 e efforts of the American secretary of state to invigorate it, as he did in a
public speech in London on 12 December when he proposed the creation by
1 e Western industrial nations and Japan of an international energy agency to

ensure their fuel supplies. The reluctance of the EEC governments to work