Seeking to Be Masters

The underdeveloped nations that produce many of the world's vital raw materials learned a lesson from the Arab oil embargo: in cartelization lies the potential for wealth and power. Many nations have talked of creating oil-like cartels to control the prices and supplies of products ranging from bauxite to bananas. Last week they were encouraged by several of the delegates at a United Nations special session called to consider raw-materials problems. But, as might be expected, many of the delegates were more concerned with scoring political points than with addressing the real issues.

The prime example of irrelevant bickering came when Chinese Deputy Premier Teng Hsiao-ping, the highest official of Mao Tse-tung's regime yet to visit North America, launched a vitriolic attack on U.S.-Soviet detente. Teng also lauded the Arab oil embargo, which he said had broken the "international economic monopoly" of the rich nations, and urged producers of other raw materials to emulate it. He drew a surprisingly low-key response from Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko, who said that "isolated voices are to be heard that show there are some who have come to the session with intentions alien to [the conference's] lofty ideals."

Warm Applause. The instigator of the conference was Algerian President Houari Boumedienne, who urged creation of a "union of raw-materials-producing countries" that could sock home the message that henceforth those nations "insist on being masters in their own houses." He was greeted by warm applause from Third World delegates, who disregarded the fact that their poor nations are being hurt much worse than the industrialized countries by the rise in oil prices. Boumedienne appeared to be trying, all too successfully, to distract attention from that fact and undercut U.S. efforts to weld oil-burning nations into a bloc that could press for lower prices.

The conference did produce one statesmanlike proposal: French Foreign Minister Michel Jobert called for creation of a U.N.-supervised agency that would build up reserve stocks of petroleum and grains. The agency would probably sell those stocks to hard-up nations if supplies got tight or market prices prohibitively high. Jobert's plan could help answer U.N. Secretary-General Kurt Waldheim's call for an "overall and global" formula to give raw-materials-producing nations a fair price for their products without bankrupting their customers. But careful evaluation of serious plans is not likely to occur in the highly charged political atmosphere of the special session.

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