The Emissary from Arabia

He does not look or act like one of the world's most powerful men. His eyes are gentle and thoughtful. His hands fondle prayer beads. He speaks softly. Yet because he is Saudi Arabia's Minister of Petroleum and Mineral Resources, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani wields greater influence over the lives of consumers in the U.S., Europe and Japan than some of their own elected officials.

Last week, after visiting European capitals, Yamani went to Washington to explain the Arab embargo and exchange views with top U.S. officials. In each meeting, he made Saudi Arabia's position clear. "We will be more than happy to relax our oil measures if there is reason," he said after a 90-minute meeting with Secretary of State Henry Kissinger. His definition of being reasonable: Arab oil will flow to the U.S.

again when Israel sets a firm timetable for evacuating lands captured from the Arabs--and actually starts moving out.

The Israelis do not have to vacate all the occupied territories, Yamani said, to get Saudi oil exports to the U.S. started again; if there is a phased Israeli withdrawal, there will be a phased step-up in oil shipments.

From someone else, this might sound like political blackmail. Yamani, however, has a way of making such statements sound eminently sensible.

For one thing, he is one of the most pro-American of prominent Arab leaders.

Also, he is widely respected as a realist who can, as an admirer says, "explain the Arab approach in ways that outsiders can understand."

The son of an eminent religious judge, Yamani was born 43 years ago in Mecca. After receiving an L.L.D. from the University of Cairo when he was only 19, he came to the U.S. in the mid-1950s and studied comparative law at New York University and Harvard.

Back in Saudi Arabia, Yamani went into government service. In 1958 he was appointed legal adviser to the nation's Council of Ministers, and by 1962 was Minister of Oil. Deeply trusted by King Feisal, he was in constant contact with Aramco, the giant U.S. oil company.

His great advantage is that he is as much at ease in a trimly tailored Western business suit as in Arabia's traditional flowing thobe. He straddles cultures, enjoying Arabian poetry and folk dancing, but also loving classical music and oilmen's lusty jokes. Western businessmen like Yamani and respect him because he knows the oil business inside out. "If that man ever went into private consultancy, he'd be swamped," says a U.S. State Department official. "All the American oil companies would want him on retainer."

More than any other Arab, Yarnani designed the 1972 "participation" agreements which allowed the Arab Persian Gulf nations to buy a 25% interest in foreign oil companies. Early this year he sounded the first warning to the U.S. that the Arab nations might cut oil output in order to "correct" America's pro-Israel stance. State Department officials dismissed the warning as a bluff.

Yamani now is trying to convince Washington that it cannot hope that economic pressure will force the Arabs to lift the embargo. Saudi Arabia already cannot absorb the more than $2 billion it earns each year in oil revenues; it is to its economic self-interest to leave the oil in the ground as a kind of savings account. Yamani insists there is only one reason for Saudi Arabia to boost its oil output: friendship for the U.S.

To Americans who can find little sign of friendship in Saudi Arabia's current stand, Yamani says that his country opposed a total oil embargo against the U.S. until political pressure from other Arab producers became irresistible. He knows that aside from its political use, the Arabs can employ their oil weapon to get almost any price boosts they ask, but says that that power must be used wisely. "We in Saudi Arabia cannot stand isolated if the economies of other nations collapse around us," he recently told TIME'S Beirut bureau chief, Karsten Prager. "We must have stability in the world. You need oil; we want to help--if you will just sit down with us and help us solve our problems."

Even as Yamani was in Washington stressing reason and friendship, however, Arab League economic ministers meeting in Cairo announced that they would gradually withdraw the estimated $10 billion that their countries have on deposit in U.S. and other Western banks.

That action, and Yamani's own words, leave no doubt that the Arabs fully appreciate the power of their economic weapons, and intend to wield them vigorously.

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