The Hindu : Arab oil weapon remains elusive

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Apr 26, 2002

International

International

Arab oil weapon remains elusive

By C. Raja Mohan

JEDDAH April 25. "Using the oil weapon now will be like attempting a suicide bombing," one of the Saudi leaders here told us when asked about the prospects of the kingdom using its leverage as the world's largest oil producer for political purposes in the current West Asian crisis.

The Saudi listed a few factors that explain why the oil weapon has become a blunt one. The American dependence on Gulf oil has declined considerably since the embargo imposed by Arab oil producers way back during the 1973 Arab-Israeli war. The West has also significantly improved the efficiency of its energy use. The economies of the Arab states are in such a disarray they cannot afford a reduction of their oil revenues even for a few days. An oil embargo is likely to hurt the friends of the Arab world in Europe and the developing world more than the Americans.

But as Crown Prince Abdullah heads into his meetings with American leaders this week and presses them to restrain Israel, there are some cards in play. Besides the fading oil weapon, the Saudi leader could threaten to pull out the huge Saudi financial holdings in the United States estimated at more than $750 billion, delink the Arab currencies from the U.S. dollar and peg it to the euro, announce a boycott of American goods and demand a removal of American military presence from Arab lands to name a few.

***

The meeting in Crawford, Texas, between the Saudi Crown Prince and the American President, George W. Bush, has been billed as the "last chance" for America and its friends in the Arab world to find a way out of the current impasse in West Asia. Frank talks and hard bargaining is likely to mark the talks between the two sides.

Although the Saudi spokesmen in Washington are hinting at the threat of use of a variety of economic and political instruments against the United States on the eve of the talks, it is unlikely that any one of them will be used. For the Saudis too need American co-operation for their own survival through the current difficult times. The alliance with the Anglo-Americans is at the very foundation of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

Despite his attempts to put pressure on the Bush administration, Prince Abdullah is unlikely to destroy the mutually beneficial partnership with the United States. The diplomatic attempt at Crawford would be to fashion a framework for peace in West Asia that will allow the Prince to claim victory and the Americans to have a peace initiative in place. At the centre of such a Saudi-American initiative could be a peace conference that would bring the Foreign Ministers of key Arab countries — Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Jordan, Morocco along with Israel.

For Saudi Arabia to endorse this historic meeting — which will bring the Saudi and Israeli Foreign Ministers together for the first time — Prince Abdullah will have to get political satisfaction on the participation of Yasser Arafat's representatives at such a meeting and explicit American definition of an agenda for peace that will be acceptable to the Arab world.

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The description of Jeddah, the western port city in the kingdom, as the "Paris of Arabia" might be bit of a stretch. But after nearly a week in the dowdy capital Riyadh, the first-time visitor to this exhilarating city will be pardoned for thinking he is on another planet.

No two cities in one country could be so dissimilar. Riyadh in the middle of the Arabian desert is the heart of the conservative establishment that rules this country. Jeddah is a port city that looks outward. Its people chafe under the rigid social orthodoxy of the kingdom and find their own ways to get around it. As the gateway to the two holy Muslim places — Mecca and Medina — Jeddah has always been international in its orientation. Pilgrims from different parts of the Islamic world have come here for centuries, and the city has absorbed the different cultures in which Islam has thrived from the Western fringes of Africa to Indonesia.

Today, people from nearly 50 countries live in Jeddah. Jeddah is the capital of the Hijaz province, a historic strip of land that runs along the Red Sea coast linking Africa and the Levant through the Arabian peninsula. As the home to the Muslim shrines, Hijaz was at the centre of the geopolitics of the Muslim world and had a political evolution very different from that of the interior parts of the Arabian peninsula.

The Hijaz was the last province to be integrated into the kingdom of Saudi Arabia. The founder of the kingdom, Ibn Saud, whose roots were in Nejd province, established his control over the Hijaz with British help (remember Lawrence of Arabia). He crowned himself the king of Hijaz in 1926. He had separate titles as the sovereign of Hijaz and Nejd until they were merged into a united Saudi Arabia in 1932.

(Concluded)

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