The embargo itself changed nothing.
Saudi oil originally destined for the United States and shipped elsewhere was merely replaced with oil re-routed from other destinations.
What hurt were the production cutbacks.
The lifestyle of every major industrial power was directly affected. Fissures came to light in the Atlantic Alliance. And the world’s currency markets were thrown into a tailspin.
The Common Market, led by France, was the first to genuflect to the Arabs.
In November, the EEC adopted a joint policy “strongly” urging both sides in the Middle East conflict to return immediately to the positions they occupied on October 22. In other words, Israel should withdraw. They also proclaimed their mutual agreement that a peace settlement should be based on such points as the end to Israeli occupation of the territories seized in 1967, recognition of the sovereignty, territorial integrity and independence of every state in the area, plus the acceptance of the legitimate rights of the Palestinians.
Nor did the Japanese hesitate to kiss the ring.
Publicly acknowledging that Japan did not wish to offend the Arab states with its proclaimed neutrality - while privately in a desperate panic over the possibility of Arab oil supplies to the oil-dependent island being turned off - the Japanese appealed to Israel to withdraw, along the lines of a Common Market proclamation.
On November 4, with the oil crisis having had no real effect on the American position towards Israel or the Israeli occupation of the seized territories, the Arab oil ministers tried again. They expanded the production cutback to 25 percent. Only Iraq refused to abide by the decision, still favoring nationalization of US and also of Dutch interests.
At the Saudi’s insistence, however, the Arab oil ministers did not tar everyone with the same brush. Yamani wanted “friendly” nations to receive the same amount of oil they’d been getting before the action. That would include Spain, India, Brazil, all the Arab states of the Middle East and North Africa, plus the Moslem states of Turkey, Pakistan and Malaysia.
Cut off would be the United States and Holland.
The rest of the world would be given a chance to prove themselves.
Because, as Yamani claims, the embargo coupled with the production cutbacks were first and foremost designed to be a force to sway public opinion, the Arab oil ministers figured that in order to sell their political motives they’d send a spokesman on the road. Now that they had the sinners’ attention, they’d start preaching their sermon.
The natural choice for evangelist was Yamani.
The other ministers then decided that the OPEC president, Belaid Abdesselam should go along.
It was a good choice. As oil minister for Algeria, Abdesselam was in the radical camp, and so his presence helped to reinforce Yamani’s views as the moderate course.
The tour kicked off in Paris and London.
In the French capital, where he and Abdesselam were welcomed warmly by President Georges Pompidou, Yamani made it clear that the chief purpose of his tour was to get the European countries to bring their full weight to force Israel to withdraw from the territories occupied since the Six Day War.
In the British capital, where he and Abdesselam were welcomed warmly by Prime Minister Edward Heath, Yamani wanted to drive home the point that oil was being used as an instrument for political purposes and not as a weapon to hurt anyone.
But he’d just spent the weekend in Geneva.
His two daughters and his son were going to school there. Whenever time permitted, he’d go to Switzerland to spend weekends with his children. They’d go shopping. They’d go to the movies. They’d go out for meals.
On that particular weekend, as an economy measure to save fuel, the Swiss had banned Sunday traffic.
He and his children had gone for a walk. With Christmas just around the corner they’d expected to find some seasonal joy on the streets. Instead they’d found downtown Geneva empty and still.
There were no cars on the streets. The city was depressing and lifeless. And it saddened Yamani that this was one of the effects of the oil crisis.
So the next day, when he and Abdesselam arrived in London, Yamani said that he honestly hoped all of this would soon be finished. He said he wished Britain a happy Christmas and that he was sorry for the inconvenience the British were experiencing. “I assure you that I was sincere in saying that.”
He said he hoped that the Israelis would soon realize the high price they were making the world pay for the illegal occupation of Arab lands. He said, the Arabs merely wanted to do something to attract the attention of ordinary people and never wanted to go to the extreme.
However, for the British, this could have easily been confused for the extreme.
In December 1973, all hell had broken loose at the same time. The secondary banking crisis crashed down on the City, taking everyone by surprise. In one stroke it literally wiped out the UK real estate market. At the same time there was a miners’ strike which cut off coal supplies to the country and soon forced Heath to declare a three-day work week. Throughout Britain, electricity got turned off at odd times.
Sales of storm lanterns and candles boomed. Garbage piled up on the streets. Business ground to a halt. There was talk of fuel rationing. The government was about to topple.
Even though the oil crisis was a separate issue, the problems in Britain were so severe that Yamani saw a gesture was needed.
As a show of good faith he made an exception of the UK and promised that Saudi Arabia would restore the oil supply to Great Britain to the same level it had been before the embargo.
With the French playing up the Arab cause and the British sounding grateful, the tour was off to a promising start.
He and Abdesselam were grabbing all the front pages that Yamani had counted on.
Moving through the rest of Europe, like Hansel and Gretel dropping breadcrumbs to find their way home, they doled out exemptions to the cutbacks whenever a government acknowledged the Arab cause.
Belgium was reprieved because it issued a declaration in Parliament condemning Israel. It had a pipeline from Rotterdam to one of its inland refineries, so Yamani allowed oil to be shipped to that pipeline.
Next came the nine-nation Common Market.
Yamani and Abdesselam went to West Germany to meet with Willy Brandt.
Over a long discussion in the Chancellor’s office in Bonn, Yamani found Brandt to be very pro-Israel. The West German leader, who had not yet won the Nobel Peace Prize, argued that the Jewish state had a right to exist. Yamani argued that the Palestinians also had a right to live like human beings.
Then Brandt compared the Palestinians to the Red Indians of North America. He said, “There is nothing like a Red Indian nation. No one even talks about the Red Indians.”
Yamani answered, “Maybe that’s because the Red Indians are not lucky enough to be surrounded by a large group of nations that are of the same race and who want to help them. It might be different today for the Red Indians if they were.”
Brandt didn’t agree with Yamani. “I remember that discussion in Bonn having been an almost cordial exchange of views, even if I objected to the oil embargo being used as political leverage. The mentioning of the American Indians must have resulted in a misunderstanding. It was one of my general observations that the world has lived with highly disputable solutions on issues of borderlines and indigenous populations.”
Brandt did however use his considerable influence to appeal for complete European solidarity in dealing with the energy crisis. The EEC confirmed support for the United Nations resolution condemning Israel and calling for its immediate withdrawal from the occupied Arab territories.
Insists Brandt, “My government wanted to be in accordance with United Nations’ resolutions.”
West Germany’s reward was one of those exemptions.
While this was going on the American attitude hardened. Henry Kissinger and William Simon, the newly appointed Energy Czar, both went public with the sentiment, “There is blackmail in the air.”
To counter that blackmail, Kissinger called for the industrialized nations to meet in Washington DC at the earliest possible moment. He wanted the oil-consuming west to make a united stand against the Arabs.
These days, just as he did then, Yamani insists blackmail was not the case. “I don’t believe this was blackmail. I’m not sure that Kissinger and Simon believed it either. But they’re politicians and that was the word it suited them to use.”
Kissinger, now firmly entrenched at the State Department, scheduled the Washington Oil Summit for February.
While this was happening, James Schlesinger, as Secretary of Defense, turned his attention to the Saudi oilfields and the possibility of military intervention.
Not as surprising a concept as it may have seemed at the time, the United States had contingency plans for that, just as they always have contingency plans for a variety of situations.
“The Arabs were pretty pissed at me,” Schlesinger points out, “but if you go back and read my press conferences at the time you’ll see that someone asked, if the President orders you to do so, can you seize the oilfields? To such a question I would answer, yes. Kissinger then got onto this business of ‘strangulation,’ if you recall. It was one of his geo-political observations. Something like, a great power cannot allow strangulation to occur by a lesser power without being prepared to take action. He told me to climb in behind him and the President and I was prepared to do so under those circumstances. But I don’t think anyone else was serious about this.”
Yamani says he was told about the US Rapid Deployment Force and their plans to capture the Saudi oilfields either at the end of 1973 or the very beginning of 1974. “I was very disturbed when I first heard about this because I knew it would be a disaster. Not only for Saudi Arabia but for the whole world.”
It seriously worried him that anyone could even suggest it. All the more so because he knew that desperate people sometimes do desperate things.
What he didn’t know at the time was that the American military was crawling with soldiers who not only thought America could manage it, but were anxious to give it a try.
As one former high-ranking Defense Department official observes, “The Naval War College was filled with Marine colonels walking around saying, we’re going to put those Goddamned rag heads back on their camels. The oil crisis made the average American very angry, particularly the ones who had to stand on the gasoline lines. It increased the appreciation of the Arab role and raised their profile, yes. But it did not increase the regard for the Arabs in the United States. There were plenty of American GIs who were saying, this isn’t Israel’s fight, this is ours.”
In spite of that, Yamani is still persuaded that a campaign to take the Saudi oilfields would have been doomed to failure long before it began.
“An invasion of the oilfields would have been suicide. From a practical viewpoint it was impossible. It still is. If you know where the oilfields are, you know why. They are scattered in the desert with so many installations that you’d need a few hundred thousand troops to take them. Then if you wanted to operate the fields you’d need many thousands more. No, it could not have been done. It cannot be done now.”
What’s more, he says, if anyone destroyed the fields instead of trying to run them, they’d be destroying themselves at the same time. “It would be like a wife cutting off her nose to displease her husband. You couldn’t afford to destroy the fields and you could never take the fields and run them.”
Naturally as soon as he heard about the plan, Yamani went to consult with Faisal. He says he found his king just as convinced as he was that it could not be done.
“He said to me right away, if they try it they will fail. He knew they could not accomplish it. Frankly, I don’t think the plan was taken too seriously by us because we knew the Americans also knew they couldn’t do it. Frankly, I think it was just talk. You know, bravado.”
But Schlesinger disagrees. “Bravado? No. I was prepared to seize Abu Dhabi. Something small. But nothing big. Militarily we could have seized one of the Arab states. And the plan did indeed scare them and anger them. No, it wasn’t just bravado. It was clearly intended as a warning. I think the Arabs were quite worried about it after ‘73. Then the whole thing receded and all that was left was a kind of residual anger. I never detected any seriousness on the part of anybody. I was more willing to contemplate it than others were but it was never serious. Anyway, Zaki wouldn’t have taken it seriously.”
As it turns out, according to a source in the Middle East, Faisal took it more seriously than Yamani suggests. Not only had he learned about the Pentagon’s plans, he’d heard that the Israelis also had a contingency plan to take the oilfields. So he instituted top-secret precautionary measures, instructing the National Guard that in the case of an invasion they were to destroy specific sensitive targets. Once these sites were put out of commission, Saudi oil production would have dropped to the very bare minimum. It would then have taken an occupying power at least one year and perhaps as much as $5 billion to get the fields working again.
Having played Europe to packed houses, Yamani and Abdesselam brought their roadshow to the United States.
Abdesselam’s role was by now very much reduced to being second banana. Yamani was top of the bill. Yamani was the man everyone wanted to meet.
He was already emerging as perhaps the most western-media-savvy Arab ever. He was a man with a message. He was also a man with enough natural talent and highly tuned skills to make certain that his message was widely heard.
The two men flew into New York and the press was waiting for him. But Yamani refused to speak to anyone. Instead, the pair went straight to Washington where a TV interview had been set up. As far as Yamani was concerned, Washington was where his mission was. That would be his first American interview.
Playing hard to get only made him more in demand.
Facing the cameras, smartly dressed in a dark suit, relaxed and confident, there was only one slightly awkward moment for him, at the very beginning of the interview, when he decided that the questions were specifically intended to antagonize him.
“I could see that they wanted to get me angry.”
But he kept his poise and stayed calm.
“I explained the situation as a friend. I even apologized for any inconvenience the crisis had brought. And you know what? The television people were very disappointed. I could see it on their faces. I later discovered that the interview was not televised. I can only imagine that they were trying to show the American public a specific type of Arab. You know, the backward Bedouins of the desert. I’m afraid they didn’t get what they wanted.”
On the other hand, Newsweek did get what they wanted - a frank and open confrontation - for their Christmas 1973 issue.
In a straight question-and-answer format interview, Yamani kept referring to the “oil weapon,” instead of using the softer, more palatable term he chooses today, “political instrument.”
With that exception, he kept close to the script he’d been using all year. He insisted that Saudi Arabia was very anxious to continue its cooperation with the United States but they now needed the United States to cooperate in solving the Middle East problem and bringing peace to the Arabs.
Newsweek: “Isn’t there a danger that nations suffering from your oil policies may be compelled to take some sort of desperate action?”
Yamani: “This may be true if you think the Arabs intend to carry the oil weapon to the point where your economy will collapse. But short of this I don’t think you would take such action. Because you know that we have a really strong weapon in our hands which we have not used and which we do not intend to use.”
Newsweek: “If then you don’t intend to do real damage upon the American or Japanese or the European economies, how can you expect the oil weapon to work?”
Yamani: Since the oil weapon is not intended to damage the others, only to draw their attention to our problems, I think we will use it in that context.”
Accompanying the interview was an in-depth feature on Yamani with the enticing headline “Merely a simple Bedouin.”
The title came from Yamani’s own description of himself.
In the piece, Newsweek explained that adjectives like brilliant, tough and awesome were frequently bestowed upon Yamani whose answer to such accolades was by now becoming something of a trademark. “Flashing a Mona Lisa-like smile, his arms spread wide in mock supplication, he protests mildly, ‘But I am merely a simple Bedouin.’”
The next paragraph began, “Well, not quite.”
Not quite, indeed.
Newsweek found him, “The complete international sophisticate right down to his neat Cardin suits and his mod black boots. But anyone who got the impression that he is some sort of playboy of the Arab world is in for a rude shock. Yamani is a slick oil expert who knows his business cold.”
As for as Newsweek was concerned, he’d become “the man of the moment.”
As far as the rest of the press was concerned, especially the Washington press corps, he was hounded and followed and trailed and photographed and quoted like a rock star.
His stay in the capital became a series of breakfasts, lunches, dinners and an endless round of cocktail parties. He met with the newly installed Vice President, Gerry Ford. He met with Henry Kissinger. He met with cabinet officers, Senators, Congressmen, diplomats, bankers and businessmen.
The printer’s ink flowed.
High on his US success, and in spite of the fact that he wasn’t able to convince the Nixon administration to denounce Israel, Yamani took his act to Japan.
By early 1973 the Japanese had heard the warnings that Washington seemed willing to disregard. They realized that by cutting off the oil supply the Arabs could effectively grind Japanese business to a halt.
Hoping to head the crisis off at the pass, the then Industry Minister Yasuhiro Nakasone visited the Middle East and paid his dues by kissing the various rings. When he returned home he announced for all the world to hear, “I have become strongly aware of the need to approach Middle East oil not simply as a tradable merchandise but something more deeply politically involved.”
Oil, he didn’t have to remind anyone, was then - and still is - a very critical resource for Japan. That’s why, he said, the nation’s oil policy could never be left to the whims of Japanese industry. It required the full involvement of the government. He even labeled the government’s approach as “petroleum diplomacy.”
Defining his nation’s views, Nakasone said, “The international oil situation is in a period of transition with producing nations seeking partners among consuming nations for long range oil contracts. Establishment of a cooperative relationship between a group of the world’s largest oil-producing nations and Japan, as one of the world’s largest consuming nations, will have an important influence over the international oil scene.”
That, he obviously hoped, would placate the Arabs and ensure the oil did not get turned off.
But then the war broke out.
Suddenly the Arabs cast a foreboding eye on Japan’s stated neutrality towards the Arab-Israel fight.
Believing that an embargo would ruin the economy and topple the government, the Japanese came up with a face-saving measure. Unable for whatever reasons, including all of the obvious ones, to get down on their knees and beg their Arab suppliers for mercy, they conceded that fence sitting would be an affront to the Arabs. So the Japanese cabinet took a fresh look at their stated neutrality where Israel was concerned.
They had oil reserves which would last 59 days but no one knew if that would be enough to get them through the crisis.
It seemed they had only two options. They could listen to the United States and remain neutral, as America wished them to. But that would not assure them of any oil after their reserves ran out either. Or, they could woo the Arabs, at the risk of American disfavor.
They made the easy choice and appealed to Israel to withdraw from the Arab lands.
When Yamani arrived in Tokyo he was greeted with full honors and received by the Emperor in a way usually reserved for a head of state.
He was given full coverage in the Japanese press. Some newspapers even produced special supplements during that week to lavish praise on him. And just so that no one missed the point, those supplements were heavily supported by advertising in a barefaced show by Japanese industry that they supported the pro-Arab side of the war.
It was, needless to say, a hasty and blatant attempt by an energy-dependent nation to curry favor with the man who, seemingly with the flick of a switch, could turn that imported energy off or on.
Even Yamani admits that, had there not been a crisis, he wouldn’t have been received the way he was.
“I used to go to Japan almost on a yearly basis and until January 1974 I was never received by the Emperor. At that time the Emperor didn’t receive anyone who wasn’t a head of state or at least a head of government. It might be more common now but then it was highly unusual. It was, in fact, the first time that any Arab minister had ever been given such treatment.”
So the oil weapon - or, if he insists, oil as a political instrument - had scored again.
“Yes, Japan woke up to the Middle East. They were already interested because they depend heavily on oil imported from the Gulf. Now they were becoming involved in the problems we were having. So this was political. It was oil as a political instrument which created that atmosphere.”
In his speeches to the Japanese, Yamani played to his audience, not at all oblivious to the message his hosts were trying to get across to him.
He told them, “Japan is in a position to have a continuous supply of crude oil from Saudi Arabia on a long-term basis.”
He told them they might be able to get around many of the current trade barriers if they were prepared, in return, to help with various economic development projects in Saudi Arabia.
He told them that King Faisal would move to reduce oil prices, but added, “if the other five oil-producing nations in the Gulf were prepared to follow suit. We will discuss the matter with other members. We are not individualists and it would be premature to tell you how much prices might be reduced.”
With the Washington Oil Summit less than a month away, Yamani now made a deliberate point of trying to drive a splinter into the bond uniting the oil-consuming nations who would attend.
He announced in Japan, “Some consumers now have a very strong individual interest in bilateral arrangements with producers. Japan is first and France, Britain and West Germany also have such an interest. Saudi Arabia is therefore prepared to enter into a dialogue with consuming nations.”
That enraged Henry Kissinger.
Yamani had struck a blow to the State Department’s strategy of uniting the oil consumers and isolating the oil producers.
It also sent a wave through OPEC’s Economic Commission, which was in session at the time in Vienna. The members had only recently agreed to maintain prices at present levels until the end of March when the Economic Committee would produce its report on both short-term and long-term crude oil pricing. But here was Yamani suggesting that, if the Japanese, the British, the French or the West Germans wanted their own deal with the Saudis, anything was possible.
“That’s true,” he comments. “I was saying to France, Germany, Japan and England that we could make our own deals. I don’t hide the face that I wanted to split them away from the 13. But it had nothing to do with OPEC because OPEC has nothing to do with marketing. We were talking about bilateral commercial relationships. What was important at that time was a secure source of supply. The Japanese for instance wanted to assure themselves that they would get so much oil from me. If I could give them that guarantee, that’s what they wanted.”
In other words, Japan was being offered a sort of preferred nation arrangement.
“Yes. But don’t forget there were two separate issues. On one hand we had the bilateral relationship between Saudi Arabia and Japan. I think that statement was related to this. Then we had the political issue which concerned the whole of the Arab countries. Where that bilateral relationship was concerned, we were looking for help from Japan to build an infrastructure in Saudi Arabia in exchange for our commitment to them to maintain the supply of energy. Where the Arab cause was concerned, we wanted Japan to say, yes Israel should give back the territories. All I wanted to do was explain to them that an announcement like that would put Japan in a different category.
*****
It’s a good bet that before October 16, 1973, very few Americans, very few Europeans and very few Japanese had ever heard of OPEC. Fewer knew anything about OPEC. And fewer still would have recognized Sheikh Yamani, even if he had come up to them on the street and introduced himself.
But a lot of things changed when that war broke out.
OPEC and especially Zaki Yamani became front-page news.
Edward Heath, who knew Yamani well during those years, says he was always impressed by him. “He’s immensely able, well balanced and had a grasp of the world situation.”
Feelings must have been mutual because on one occasion when Heath was in Switzerland to conduct an orchestra - a favorite hobby - and heard that Yamani was also in the country, Heath personally invited Yamani to attend the concert, and he did.
However, an interesting aside from Heath is that while he felt he could always deal with Yamani - “Perfectly well” – it was understood by politicians in the West that Yamani was “below the salt” in Saudi Arabia.
What Heath meant is that westerners could not help but notice how Yamani was forever being reminded by certain members of the royal family that, in spite of his relationship with Faisal, he was not and would never be a member of the royal family.
Below the salt perhaps in Saudi Arabia. But in the West it was different because, as long as Faisal was alive, there was never any doubt that whatever Yamani said was what the king would say.
As one Aramco official observed, “Every time we had any sort of argument with Yamani while Faisal was alive, we’d want to go see the king. Every time we asked for that, Yamani was always happy to arrange it. He knew what the king’s reaction would be. He knew Faisal would always support him all the way because the two thought exactly alike.”
Someone else who knew Yamani during those days was Sir Alan Rothnie, the then British Ambassador to Saudi Arabia.
“When I first got there it was midsummer 1972. In those days Yamani had a tiny house next to the king’s palace on what was then the seafront in Jeddah, although it’s no longer on the seafront because there was a lot of fill-in. He’d already been in office 10 years. It was really only with the quadrupling of oil prices in 1973 that he became a figure on the world stage. And then he emerged as such a very important figure.”
It’s fair to say that, until Yamani came along, the all-too-common attitude in the West was to consider Mediterranean Arabs as the advanced ones and the Gulf Arabs as the backward, feudal Bedouins of the desert.
Yamani single-handedly changed that. Although he’s too modest to be that definitive. “I believe I changed the image that the Arabs had in the West and especially in the United States, as savage, ignorant people. When I was talking to the Americans, I did not appear as a savage, nor as ignorant. This reflected on the so-called backward Bedouins of the desert.”
The instant he says that he’s reminded of the, “I am just a simple Bedouin” quote.
Yamani responds with a broad smile - much too polite to scream, you just won’t let me live that one down. “In reality, I came from that part of the world. I grew up there. I have my roots there. So maybe the Bedouins are not all that bad.”
Come on, he’s told, you’re hardly “a simple Bedouin.”
He answers, “I’m comfortable in the West. Very much so. I wear my Arabic clothes sometimes to relax in the West because they’re more comfortable than western clothes. But I don’t know, maybe if all Bedouins had a chance to live in the West they might grow as comfortable here as I am.” He pauses for a moment, and then the smile returns, “You understand, we Bedouins are very adaptable people.”
*****
Kissinger’s game plan was to confront the oil producers by grouping the oil-consuming nations into an organization which would protect certain commercial and financial arrangements. Collective negotiation with OPEC was not ruled out but would be postponed until the consumers’ cartel had a chance to organize.
Set for February 11-12, 1974, the guest list for the Washington Oil Summit included the nine EEC members, Canada, Norway and Japan, as well as the Secretary General for the Office of Economic Cooperation and Development.
If it accomplished nothing else, it certainly made the Arabs sit up and take notice.
“Of course we opposed it,” Yamani says. “I personally opposed it violently. Kissinger was very disturbed by my attitude. He wanted to line up all the consumers, whether they be from the developed nations or the developing nations, to have a united front against OPEC. There was no way that I wanted the meeting to take place because it meant putting the oil producers on one side against the whole world. I told the nations who planned to attend that this meeting would disturb us.”
If it appeared to Yamani that America might somehow rally the troops and find an effective way to stop the oil weapon from doing any more damage, that’s pretty much what Kissinger had in mind. In his opinion, if the oil consuming nations didn’t do something, the world - and that would include the Arabs - could be plunged into an economic depression.
Because the West took this seriously, everyone who got an invitation showed up.
And, perhaps, something could have come of the meeting.
Except that the French representative, a minor-league political hack named Michel Jobert, got in the way.
Setting the tone of France’s cooperation with the other nations present, Jobert refused to speak in any language but French. English was to be the language of the meeting and, as it happens, Jobert speaks acceptable English. But he insisted on his right to speak French – his message was, “the world is out of step with me” – so delays occurred while translators and interpreters were arranged.
Then, when the United States proposed a joint effort to confront energy issues, Jobert found that his Common Market partners - who were in favor of the agreement - were again out of step with France.
Put to a vote, all of the conferees - except France - agreed to coordinate national policies in the conservation of energy and restraining demand, a system of allocating supplies during a severe shortage, support for national development of additional energy sources, plus the acceleration of energy research and development programs.
Former British Prime Minister Lord Home, then Sir Alec who was serving as Foreign Minister, remembers the conference. “Jobert was rather apt to do what he did. I’d been at a number of conferences with him at which he’d almost always insisted on French. It would have helped a great deal if France had cooperated but I wouldn’t say that we could have made a stand. The French attitude made it very difficult for us all. Although I can’t say that anything very different would have happened had France come along with us.”
Nor did France’s refusal to cooperate with the oil summit in Washington come as a surprise to Yamani. “Anyway, even if they had been successful in agreeing to a proposal, I don’t think they would have been able to do anything. We were always able to talk to the developing countries. They weren’t. France was consistent in their policy because they also refused to be members of Kissinger’s International Energy Agency (IEA). They refused the theme of Kissinger’s confrontation. They wanted some sort of cooperation. So they were really in a like mind with Saudi Arabia.”
Traditionally, the French have always believed that they, alone in Europe, hold a privileged place when it comes to western relations with the Arabs. But their memory runs short. They colonized North Africa, spreading their influence through Morocco, Algeria and Tunisia. Yet they were thrown out of North Africa and their oil interests were nationalized in Algeria. They also believed they had a special in with the Iranians when the Ayatollah went into exile and they offered him shelter in a villa outside Paris. Yet when the Ayatollah returned to Tehran, France was not on any “special favor” port of call for Iranian oil tankers.
That they were trying it on with the Saudis is obvious.
Although Yamani is too diplomatic to say as much. He prefers, “Yes, they were getting oil from Saudi Arabia. But they were also getting oil from several other producers. I don’t really agree with you that their cooperation in this case, or lack of it in the case of the Washington Oil Summit, was based on the motives you suggest. I prefer to think that they simply had a different philosophy about the third world.”
The result of the Washington Oil Summit was proof that Europe had, in spite of all the exemptions, fallen victim to the oil weapon. Europe’s power and unity were a myth. Europe’s wealth, foreign trade and enormous population didn’t add up to much in terms of political power.
When asked if he was pleased to see that the Washington conference became something of a fiasco, Yamani is fast to answer, “Of course. Because we were heading for confrontation and it wasn’t good for the producers or the consumers. But then when you consider a superpower, like America, I can’t blame them for doing what they did. Or thinking the way they thought.”
He says he understands how it could be a tough pill for the Americans to swallow, finding themselves in a position where small nations were trying to tell them what to do. “I don’t blame the Americans for thinking that those small nations have to be punished. If they thought OPEC was looking for a fight, then okay, I can see why they acted the way they did. But I don’t think OPEC was looking for confrontation. The problem for America was that the producers were, for the first time, taking the decision for the price of oil into their own hands. Did that look to America like the producers wanted a confrontation with the consumers? Yes, I suppose it did.”
Always thinking long term, Yamani says he tried to look beyond the point of confrontation and hoped that the crisis might somehow be used as a catalyst to get the industrialized world to sit down and talk to the developing world.
“We did not want confrontation, the way Henry Kissinger wanted it. We wanted cooperation. We wanted to have different groups talking together, like the north-south divide.”
As a direct result of the Washington conference, the Algerians called for a special session of the United Nations to discuss the economic problems of the south, including energy.
Saudi Arabia sent a special delegation, headed by Sheikh Yamani.
Seeing that the UN General Assembly was really no different than an oversized OPEC conference, Yamani resorted to character and started personally lobbying members to sort out their views. He spent his first few days in New York on the phone or in private meetings, eventually coming to the conclusion that the Algerian approach, to put these matters before the General Assembly, would merely water down the issues.
“This was my chance to take the developing nations away from Kissinger and bring them into our camp. But let’s be frank, once you go to the United Nations you never reach an agreement. You wind up with nice speeches and that’s all. Nothing much gets accomplished. I felt that this issue, the energy discussion, was a very vital and important one. Too important to leave to the General Assembly.”
Addressing the General Assembly, Yamani asked for a special conference to be convened between the north and the south where all of their problems could be discussed, including energy. He even specified that it begin with a special meeting for a group of ten nations who would prepare the agenda for the general meeting.
But America strongly opposed it.
“I wanted some sort of real cooperation. Kissinger was looking for confrontation. Definitely. The Washington conference did not give him what he wanted so he started the International Energy Agency.”
However, the day after Yamani made his north-south proposal, he was approached in New York by the French Ambassador who expressed interest in the idea.
As a result of their discussions, French President Valery Giscard d’Estaing contacted King Faisal and suggested that both France and Saudi Arabia work together to call for the preparatory meeting according to the ten-nation Yamani list.
Shortly thereafter France and Saudi Arabia did just that.
However, unbeknownst to Giscard d’Estaing, Yamani had advised King Faisal not to let Saudi Arabia be active in the invitations.
“It would have been difficult for political reasons both inside and outside OPEC. I felt it was not a good idea for Saudi Arabia to appear in the limelight like that. We were the real power behind it but I wanted to remain quietly in the background. France agreed and that was the way it was done.”
The North-South Conference eventually happened, although it was plagued with problems from the start.
The Americans objected to the conference on the grounds that it was nothing but an attempt to upstage the IEA at the very moment of its creation.
In Britain, the conference was thought to be, at best, a duplication of efforts already under way, at worst, a hindrance.
The ten nations came up with an agenda that outlined four areas of discussion: raw materials, transfer of technology, international debt and energy.
Within two years the whole thing was so fragmented that it faded away.
Giscard d’Estaing proclaimed it dead with great regret. He’d adopted it as his own. So if it was a failure, the failure belonged to him.
Yamani, standing quietly in the wings, had very shrewdly allowed the French President all the glory.
If nothing else, it took some of the headlines away from Kissinger’s IEA.
“Kissinger set up the IEA for the purpose of confrontation,” Yamani relentlessly insists, “which was why we in OPEC refused to talk to the IEA. Even today, while the character of the IEA has changed, it’s still a sin in OPEC to talk to them.”
Officially. Because what you do in the limelight is one thing, what you do in the shadows is another.
Yamani says, “I will now admit that I was committing that sin. Not in public. But in a closed room. Throughout the 1970s I often met with the head of the IEA. Confidentially. When I was the chairman of the Long Term Strategy Committee in OPEC, I also established a relationship with the EEC. That wasn’t supposed to be done but I knew that we couldn’t ignore them. They were too important. Not at the beginning, but when they finally became established and had something to offer, I was always willing to listen. Naturally, I had to proceed carefully with the IEA because Saudi Arabia is after all a member of OPEC and we would never do anything publicly that would annoy some members. That’s politics. But yes, I used to meet with the chairman of the IEA. Maybe we would have lunch. Maybe we would just meet quietly and talk. It is often very useful to keep open certain informal lines of communication.”
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