Off to a Bad Start

French Diplomat Louis de Guiringaud worked almost all night to break the deadlock, but failed. The next afternoon U.S. Under Secretary of State Charles W. Robinson flew home alone from Paris, and the remaining delegates to the international energy conference last week quietly ended their meeting.

The gathering brought together representatives of four members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, three developing oil consumers (Brazil, India and Zaire) and eleven industrialized oil importers (Japan; the nine-nation Common Market, speaking through a single delegate; and the U.S.). They were supposed to prepare an agenda for a larger conference later this year, but the parties were unable to agree on the topics.

The four OPEC members (Algeria, Iran, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela) joined forces with the developing nations to insist that a later conference would have to consider price-stabilizing arrangements for a wide range of commodities, not just oil.

The industrialized nations wanted to limit the agenda to energy and directly related topics. Even so, a compromise did seem within reach for a time. The European Community, negotiating on behalf of the U.S. and Japan, made a proposal that would cover raw materials as well as oil but would provide for "special attention" for the oil issue. As a sweetener, the proposal also offered to consider subjects of interest to the developing countries such as industrialization and the transfer of technology. European and American diplomats fully expected that the offer would break the deadlock, and some of them were making premature announcements about the success of the conference.

To their surprise, the seven nonindustrialized countries flatly turned down the compromise because in their opinion it still gave too much emphasis to the oil issue. Explained Robinson: "The conference broke down on the inability to find satisfactory middle ground between our view that it should be an energy-centered conference and the OPEC and less developed nations' view that it should be a forum for discussion of a new world economic order."

As the conference closed, delegates promised to keep in touch. But the outlook for a full-dress global meeting--or any sort of oil amity--is dim. At week's end while visiting Washington, Saudia Arabia's petroleum minister, Ahmed Zaki Yamani, warned Americans that in the event of a new war in the Middle East, or even some vaguely defined "situation like war," the Arabs would not hesitate to impose another oil embargo on the U.S. and to extend it to Japan and Western Europe if they dared to share their supplies with the U.S.

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