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414 Arabia, the Gulf and the West

together in resisting the extortive tactics of the Arab oil states was demon­
strated all too plainly when the Copenhagen conference opened on 14
December. Originally the conference had been called on the initiative of
President Pompidou of France to discuss the political development of the
EEC. No real preparation had been made for it, however, even in the shape of
prior consultations at lower levels of government. In any case, the general
feeling seemed to be that its raison d’etre had been eclipsed by the events of the
previous two months. The minds of all the participants were preoccupied with
the oil crisis, though not with plans to do anything constructive about it.
Matters were made worse by the receipt of news on the eve of the conference
that the foreign ministers of six Arab countries - Saudi Arabia, Algeria,
Morocco, Tunisia, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates - were on their way to
Copenhagen for the purpose, so it was said, of informing the heads of govern­
ment of the EEC of the decisions of the Algiers conference.
The first two of these gate-crashers descended upon Copenhagen on the
opening day of the conference. They were Abdul Aziz Bouteflika, the Algerian
foreign minister, and Adnan al-Pachachi, a former foreign minister of Iraq
(and cousin of Nadim al-Pachachi) who was temporarily acting as foreign
minister of the UAE. It could scarcely be said of them that they represented
countries of whose might the globe lived in dread, yet their mere appearance
sufficed to cause consternation among the statesmen of Europe. What was their
true mission? How were they to be received? What was to be said to them?
(That they might simply have decided to come after hearing reports from
Yamani and Abdessalem of the splendid hospitality dispensed by Europe’s
governments never seemed to occur to anyone.) The two envoys let it be known
that they wanted an exchange of views with the EEC countries. Britain and
France eagerly supported their request, but West Germany, Denmark and the
Benelux countries were not prepared to do more than accord them a hearing.
On the evening of 14 December the foreign ministers of the EEC waited upon
Bouteflika and Pachachi at the Danish foreign ministry. What passed there was
not made known publicly, although Pachachi afterwards told the press, We
don’t want to hurt Europe and create hardship. We do not want to blackmail
you’ — which was a droll interpretation, to say the least, of the existing
situation. The rest of his message was a familiar one, which was repeated by
Bouteflika at a crowded press conference the following day: Europe must take
Israel severely to task for her sins; ‘Europe must urgently reconsider its
policies’. , .
Europe, in fact, in the persons of its assembled heads of government, a
been doing so for the previous two days, and had only succeeded in con oun -
ing itself further. The German chancellor, Willy Brandt, tried to promote the
idea of a common energy policy, as Kissinger had done a few days earlier, an
to persuade his partners in the EEC to share the burden of oil shortages
equitably by pooling their reserves. Heath and Pompidou had little r