Poor vs. Rich : A New Global Conflict

A conflict between two worlds--one rich, one poor--is developing, and the battlefield is the globe itself. On one side are two dozen or so industrialized, non-Communist states whose 750 million citizens consume most of the world's resources, produce most of its manufactured goods and enjoy history's highest standard of living. Demanding an ever larger share of that wealth are about 100 underdeveloped poor states with 2 billion people--millions of whom exist in the shadow of death by starvation or disease. So far, the conflict has been limited to economic pressures and proposals, and speeches in international forums. But the needs of the underprivileged nations are so pressing that some Western politicians--such as British Minister of Overseas Development Reg Prentice--describe them as a "time bomb for the human race." There are even exaggerated fears that radical poor nations, after acquiring nuclear explosives, might try to blackmail rich nations into giving up their wealth by threatening a nuclear holocaust. A more plausible danger is that the conflict could destroy the international economic system on which the stability of much of the world is based.

The have-nots are often described as the South (in contrast to the industrialized North), the LDCs (less developed countries) or the Third World (in comparison with the First World of the industrialized West and the Second World of Communism). The diplomatic vehicle often used by the poor nations is the so-called Group of 77, a consortium of developing countries (actually, there are now 103) within the United Nations.

The leaders of the poor include such articulate spokesmen as Algeria's Houari Boumedienne, Tanzania's Julius Nyerere, Jamaica's Michael Manley and Mexico's Luis Echeverria, who recite a familiar litany of sins that they believe are being committed by the First World against them: imperialism, unjust exploitation of resources, arrogance, waste and neocolonialism. Last month Nyerere told a meeting of the Commonwealth Society in London: "I am saying that it is not right that the vast majority of the world's people should be forced into the position of beggars, without dignity. We demand change, and the only question is whether it comes by dialogue or confrontation."

In the U.N. General Assembly, where they now constitute a solid and virtually unbeatable voting bloc on any given issue, the developing states have approved resolutions that demand a "new international economic order." The meaning: massive and painful sacrifices by the rich on behalf of the poor. So one-sided have the Assembly's actions become that the U.S. has denounced them as "a tyranny of the majority"; outspoken U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Daniel P. Moynihan has characterized them as "the politics of resentment and the economics of envy."

Nonetheless, the U.S., along with other First World nations, concedes that there is a real grievance behind the angry rhetoric. This week representatives of both rich and poor states will gather in Paris for a conference that could launch a lengthy review of the complex policies affecting world trade, energy and economic development.

The Problems of Poverty

The basic cause of the First World-LDC confrontation is not in dispute: the glaring contrast between the opulent life of the industrialized nations and the poverty, misery and despair that blankets half the world's inhabitants. An estimated 1 billion of them suffer in some degree from malnutrition; perhaps half a million die of starvation annually. Lacking sanitary water as well as insecticides and disinfectants, tens of millions are struck down with debilitating disease--malaria, typhoid, hookworm, dysentery, cholera.

Although the Third World population is literally exploding--there are 200,000 new mouths to feed every day--the land available for growing food is diminishing. In many parts of the developing world, valuable farm acreage has been abandoned because of urban sprawl, soil erosion and desert encroachment. As life in the countryside becomes too wretched to endure, millions of peasants abandon their farms and head for the slums of the developing world's cities, vainly seeking jobs that do not exist. Whether they are called favelas, ranches, bustees, barriadas or bidonvilles, there is a tragic sameness about these hovels where millions live and die: the fragile shacks made of cardboard or rusting corrugated sheet metal, the famished children's distended bellies, the inescapable stench of human beings packed tightly together without ready access to water or toilets (see box page 38).

Widespread poverty is a problem that afflicts all underdeveloped countries. Nonetheless, they differ among themselves so greatly in their economic promise that it makes more sense these days to divide the globe into five worlds instead of three:

THE FIRST WORLD includes the advanced industrial nations of Europe, North America and Asia that accept a more or less capitalist, market-oriented economy. The U.S., Canada, Japan, most of the nations of Western Europe, New Zealand and Australia clearly qualify. South Africa, Portugal, Greece, Spain and Argentina are borderline cases.

THE SECOND WORLD includes the 1.3 billion people of the world's centrally planned, Communist-run nations, with the exception of Yugoslavia, which has a somewhat mixed economy.

THE THIRD WORLD, with 620 million inhabitants, is made up of a large body of still poor states that need time and technology, rather than massive foreign aid, to build modern, developed economies. The nations in this category include the revenue-rich members of OPEC (Organization of Oil Exporting Countries), as well as states whose development may be guaranteed by other key natural resources: Zaire and Zambia (copper), Morocco (phosphates), Malaysia (tin, rubber and timber). Into this group also fall nations like Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea, Mexico and Brazil, which are developed enough to attract foreign investment and borrow on commercial terms.

THE FOURTH WORLD contains the LDCs that have some raw materials, some modern economic infrastructure and some trained technocrats and administrators and thus could eventually achieve self-sustaining economic growth. But unlike Third World countries, they need significant financial help and special treatment by the industrial powers to spur exports of their goods and imports of technology. This group, with a population of 930 million, includes Peru, the Dominican Republic, Liberia, Jordan, Egypt, Thailand and Guinea-Bissau.

THE FIFTH WORLD countries, comprising 175 million inhabitants, are the globe's true basket cases, perhaps doomed to remain on a permanent dole. They have few, if any, easily exploitable resources to sell abroad, and most are seemingly unable to grow enough food to feed themselves. The most notable catastrophe countries are Mali, Chad, Ethiopia, Somalia, Rwanda and Bangladesh.

Like 19th century Poland--which was said to be not so much a country as a state of mind--the poor nations are united more perhaps by attitude than by geography. Underlying that unity are a gnawing sense of anger against the West and a common feeling that their fate is not in their own hands. Two related events galvanized them into a cohesive bloc: the 1973 decision by the ministers of OPEC to quadruple the price of oil, which had been $2 per bbl., and the Arab nations' imposition of an oil embargo at the time of the October War. The LDCs--even those not directly involved in oil exports or the Middle East conflict--were exhilarated. They saw both actions as proof that the industrialized West was vulnerable to collective pressures from the poor nations. "For the first time since the rise of Western capitalism, a decision affecting the world economy was taken outside the West," says Ismail Sabry Abdullah, director of Egypt's Institute of National Planning.

Much to the surprise of some Western observers, the unity of the poor in confrontation with the rich has survived, even though the OPEC price hike did more harm to the economies of underdeveloped nations than to those of the West. Most First World countries ultimately succeeded in boosting exports of their manufactured goods and technology enough to offset the higher import costs of petroleum. Developing countries, on the other hand, have had to spend so much of their foreign currency reserves on costlier oil or petroleum products that many have had to cut back sharply on development plans requiring capital equipment imported from the West. By joining in the chorus that blames the First World for the economic problems of the underdeveloped states, OPEC has been able to deflect responsibility for the disastrous impact of higher oil prices. Many underdeveloped countries, moreover, have been actively trying to create OPEC-like cartels in order to increase profits on their own commodity exports. While bauxite exporters have been able to hike their prices, copper producers have not.

The anger and unity of the poor have been reinforced by the worldwide recession. If nothing else, the slump demonstrated how dependent the developing economies still are on the prosperity of the First World. When the industrialized West's consumption of LDC raw materials dropped, so did the price of many commodities. The world price of copper, for example, has plummeted from $1.52 per Ib. in mid-1974 to 53-c- today. To cover deficits caused by the loss of sales to the West and the increase in imported oil prices, many developing countries have had to borrow heavily. Their total foreign debt will reach an estimated $175 billion by year's end. In some countries, debt servicing on loans accounts for about 50% of the aid received from the First World.

In attacking the First World's complacency, the developing nations make four main charges, each of which contains some truth:

1) Colonial exploitation raped defenseless societies, depriving them of their natural resources and destroying traditional social relationships.

As proof, spokesmen for developing nations frequently point to Egypt; industries founded there in the early 19th century, when the country was autonomous although under loose Turkish sovereignty, were dismantled by the British after they occupied the country in 1882. Still, there is ample evidence that colonialism actually improved most societies. In 1962, for example, Algeria acquired railways, roads, ports, airfields, hospitals, schools, water supplies and power stations from the departing French--not to mention a thriving network of profitable farms that have since been all but ruined by heavyhanded socialist administration.

2) In the post-colonial period, the First World has rigged the international economic system to keep the poor dependent.

It is true that the First World has favored imports of LDC commodities rather than manufactured products. This may have discouraged the growth of industry in some of the developing nations and hindered economic diversification. The reliance on a single crop or mineral for export earnings painfully exposes many poor countries to erratic swings in the price of raw materials. Still, while trade relations are not always equitable, it is highly debatable whether the First World has really been using trade to exploit the developing countries. If that were so, notes British Economist P.T. Bauer, then nations like Taiwan, Singapore, Brazil and South Korea, which are the most involved in extensive foreign trade, would not have become the most prosperous LDCs. Bauer rightly points out that the poorest states are "those with the fewest or no external contacts."

3) Foreign aid has done little to help the poor, but has instead created enclaves of privileged elites addicted to First World luxuries and living standards.

Imported technology almost inevitably brings along elements of the civilization that created it, such as high consumption patterns. But poor nations have to accept that fact if they want to stimulate economic growth. Moreover, if the benefits of growth do not reach all segments of a developing country's population, the fault usually lies more with the aid recipient than with the donor. Hyperinflated bureaucracies and corrupt officials in a poor state, for instance, claim a large share of their nation's output, while widespread illiteracy limits access to new jobs stimulated by the economic development. While foreign investors may bring capital-intensive, labor-saving equipment into a country where there is massive unemployment, they frequently do so to offset the high wages that governments and trade unions would otherwise force them to pay urban workers.

4) Through aid programs, investments and exportation of culture, the First World--most notably the U.S.--has undermined the dignity and self-sufficiency of the underdeveloped states.

This is a romantical populist argument, reflecting a widespread and partly justifiable resentment against the corrosive impact of modernization on traditional values. It is a complaint, however, more properly leveled at the concepts of technology and progress rather than at the First World. After all, no aid donor forces a poor country to opt for economic growth. South Korea's Deputy Premier Nam Duck Woo recently noted what ought to be obvious to all underdeveloped countries: "As people get richer, their values become more materialistic, less spiritual. But I suppose this is a price we all pay." Moreover, the image of underdeveloped countries as idyllic Arcadias despoiled by contact with the First World is a myth. Disease, famine and violence (sometimes even cannibalism) were rampant in primitive societies; inequality of wealth and power was the rule rather than the exception. Almost all the underdeveloped nations were poor before industrialization began in the North, and they cannot blame their continued Impoverishment on the First World's success.

It is also fallacious to blame the poor countries' lack of self-sufficiency on waste and overconsumption by the rich. The First World may indeed consume a greater share of the planet's output than is warranted by its share of the population; but it produces a greatly disproportionate share of the world's manufactured goods, surplus commodities, inventions and technology.

How should the Third World redress these grievances, real and imagined? There are many solutions, offered with varying degrees of reason and logic by spokesmen for poor nations, but they all come down to one. As Economist Samuel Parmar sums it up: "The developed nations must accept a new lifestyle." At the U.N., the Group of 77 has proposed that the First World double or triple its financial-aid contributions. Such capital transfers, moreover, should no longer be voluntary, but mandated--perhaps by a tax on commodities. Under this proposed "new order," national currencies, such as the U.S. dollar and German mark, would be phased out as reserves held by central banks. In their place would be the Special Drawing Rights (S.D.R.s) issued by the International Monetary Fund. The principle governing distribution of the S.D.R.s should not be maintenance of international monetary stability, as it is now, but promotion of the development of poor countries.

The LDCs insist on tariff preferences for their exports and that the First World ban production of potentially competitive synthetics and substitutes. The purchasing power of the poor should be protected from any sharp decline in the value of their community exports by "indexing"--setting a fixed relationship between the price of the developing countries' raw materials and the price of the First World's manufactured goods.

Spokesmen for developing countries privately concede that they do not expect all of the proposed "new order" to be accepted. Even so, the poor states' demands--if only because of the new strength of their voices--constitute an agenda for action that the rich must confront. After long dismissing LDC demands as unrealistically shrill, Washington is now ready to talk about a number of them. "We have heard your voices. We will join your efforts," Secretary of State Kissinger told the U.N. last September in a speech read for him by Moynihan. In it, the U.S. offered more than two dozen measures aimed at improving the poor countries' prospects for growth (TIME, Sept. 15). Washington also agreed to attend this week's ministerial-level Paris Conference on International Economic Cooperation, backing down from its original insistence that the agenda be limited to energy matters. The 27 delegations* are now empowered to establish commissions to deal with the problems of trade, economic development and international finances as well as energy.

Washington's turn-around has been welcomed by other First World nations, notably Western European countries that are much more vulnerable to commodity embargoes and trade disruptions than is the U.S. economy. Europe and Japan, unlike the U.S., possess few of the raw materials consumed by their industries. German officials actually call aid "a strategic element more than an ethical obligation."

In fact, First World aid has already been considerable. During the past 15 years, an era in which most of the Group of 77 gained independence, nonmilitary gifts to developing countries from the First World have totaled about $57 billion, and concessional loans have comprised some $84 billion. During the 1960s the U.S. contributed more than half of that assistance. Last year it gave 30% of the $11.3 billion in aid, $14 billion in private investment and $2.2 billion in the form of technical assistance that flowed from the First World to the poor.

As generous as this aid seems, it falls short of the goal set by the U.N. Conference on Trade and Development (UNCTAD) and accepted by all First World states--an annual transfer of .7% of its G.N.P. to developing nations in the form of grants or low-interest loans. Last year First World aid equaled only .33% of its combined G.N.P., down significantly from the .44% level of the mid-1960s; U.S. aid last year was .23%.

For all the complaints about First World aid, the poor seldom criticize the Second World's miserly transfer of a mere .1% of its G.N.P. as assistance to non-Communist LDCs in the past two decades: $10 billion from the Soviet Union and $5.5 billion from China. At recent U.N. sessions, both the Soviets and the Chinese failed to suggest any new proposals for development programs; their silence has since drawn increasing private criticism from LDC diplomats. The Soviet rejoinder: "The imperialist powers are responsible for the economic backwardness of the developing countries; it is their obligation to recompense them for their plunder of their wealth."

Another source of aid, still untapped by most underdeveloped states, is the bulging coffers of OPEC. This year the cartel's members are expected to earn $100 billion; even with the astronomical sums being spent on themselves, they will still have a balance of payments surplus of about $40 billion. While OPEC has promised assistance to many Fourth and Fifth World states whose economies have been ravaged by the high cost of imported oil, nearly all of the $2.2 billion it disbursed as aid last year went only to Arab and other Moslem countries.

In recent years, the First World's foreign-aid approach of the 1950s and 1960s has been widely criticized for frequently having been too politically motivated, too concerned with showy projects and inappropriate to the needs of the recipients. There is some truth to this, reports TIME New Delhi Bureau Chief William Smith: "The industrial plants the donors have supplied have been often technologically unsuited to the needs of the recipient. The imported factories may be capital-rather than labor-intensive, wrong for the climate and habits of the local workers and perhaps even designed to process raw materials of a different quality."

Even more serious has been the slighting of rural problems, particularly the necessity of helping developing countries increase food production. Thus even outright food aid, like the 270.5 million metric tons given away since 1955 by the U.S., may have some negative impact if it allows governments to avoid the politically unpopular policies needed to boost agricultural output.

Foreign aid has often been more effective than most of the poor are willing to admit. Dotting the developing countries are new dams, low-rent public housing, irrigation systems, power plants and canals. These projects have significantly contributed to the impressive 5.5% annual G.N.P. increase logged by the LDCs as a group during the 1960s, and the nearly 6% annual rise from 1970 to 1974. These gains, of course, were not evenly distributed; a dozen or so nations, such as Brazil, South Korea and Taiwan, developed much more quickly than most of the others, while a few, including Southern Yemen and Niger, have actually had a negative rate of growth. In many underdeveloped countries, moreover, programs that have achieved targeted rates of growth have failed to raise living standards or generate savings because the gains have been offset by population growth. Swiss Economist Paul Bairoch points out that the pace of agricultural growth in the developing world has compared favorably with that of the First World in its period of economic takeoff during the 19th century. "The real difference between the performance of the two," stresses Bairoch, "is caused by the growth of population." During its industrial revolution, the West's population grew about .5% annually; the poor countries today are expanding at a yearly rate of'2.6%.

What Can Be Done for Them

Clearly, First World nations can do much to improve the effectiveness of their aid to the developing countries. Among the principal steps recommended by economists:

> Channel a greater portion of financial assistance through international agencies, such as the World Bank, which would provide fiscal supervision of projects and also defuse criticism by the poor that the aid is politically motivated. The bank, in fact, is already a major source of development money; this year it has committed $1.5 billion in low-interest loans.

> Provide more aid aimed at increasing food output. Britain has already adopted a "rural strategy" for its overseas-aid program, and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has endorsed the establishment of an International Fund for Agricultural Development to research new techniques for cultivating land. The World Bank has currently earmarked $1 billion for projects to aid the rural poor. The First World could also underwrite the cost of bringing new lands under the plow. Huge areas of Africa are suitable for livestock ranching but cannot be developed until money is available to eliminate diseases that attack both cattle and herders. Also badly needed: improved food-storage systems to prevent the massive destruction of grains by rot, insects, rodents and monkeys. In Calcutta, in fact, up to 30% of the stored grain is devoured by mice and other pests.

> Help stabilize the export earnings of the Fourth and Fifth World countries to enable them to reduce the wild price fluctuations of the commodity markets and develop a realistic strategy for economic growth. The Common Market, for example, recently inaugurated its Stabex plan, which establishes a $450 million fund to be used to help 46 African, Caribbean and Pacific states, whose principal exports include cocoa, coffee, copra and cotton. If one of those countries' commodity earnings drop below an established minimum, it can draw an amount equal to the shortfall from the fund; when the commodity earnings recover, the fund is repaid.

> Eliminate remaining barriers to imports of the less developed countries' goods. This means not only granting preferential tariffs, as the U.S. has just done on 2,724 products, but also revising the complex regulations that in effect act as nontariff barriers to imports.

> Transfer technology and pursue research specifically suited to Fourth and Fifth World conditions. An Indian agricultural expert stresses, for instance, that his country may have less need for "miracle seeds" than for an improved oxen-driven steel hoe or an improved bullock cart.

Though these measures fall far short of a new economic order, they should nonetheless enable many Fourth World countries to achieve self-sustaining growth. For all its voluble critics, the present international economic system probably provides the most efficient allocation of the earth's labor and resources.

It is unrealistic for the Group of 77 to expect the First World voluntarily to dismantle the existing economic order and slash the living standards of its citizens. It is even questionable whether most First World electorates would tolerate a major increase in foreign aid or whether trade unions would allow unrestricted competition for goods produced by cheap labor in developing lands. In one recent survey, Americans ranked economic aid and loans to the poor no higher than 20th on a list of 23 areas in which they would like to see their tax money spent.

Thus if there is to be a useful dialogue on economic justice, the developing countries must come to understand the limits of what the First World can and will do. The poor must also understand that they need the resources of the rich--and capital, technology and markets--more than the First World requires the LDCs' raw material. Reports TIME Economics Correspondent John Berry: "There is hope in Washington that the discussions in the specialized commissions set up by this week's Paris conference will convince most LDC leaders that some of their favorite projects would hurt instead of help them. Indexing, for example, would drive some developing countries even deeper into the hole, for they are net importers of commodities." Dietrich Kebschull, of Hamburg's HWWA Institute of Economic Research, says that manufacturers in the developed countries would add the higher cost of their raw materials to the prices of the finished products. Warns Kebschull: "The commodity price increases, which at first may have been helpful to the less developed countries, would hit them badly in the second round."

A ban on synthetics would be similarly foolish, for it would impede technical progress. The poor may even be disappointed by the results achieved by new cartels. Unlike petroleum, other raw materials face tough competition from substitutes, synthetics and recycling. If bauxite becomes too costly, other materials can be used to replace aluminum; containers, for example, may be made from tin or glass instead. Moreover, as a cartel drives up the price of a commodity, at some point it becomes economical to reprocess scrap materials--something impossible for oil.

What They Must Do Themselves

Foreign financial help alone cannot solve the poor's economic problems. "No nation, no matter how rich, can develop another country," says Egypt's Ismail Sabry Abdullah. There is much, in fact, that the developing world must do for itself:

> Stress agricultural development. Not only must the countryside help feed the nation, it must also provide savings to fuel future growth and be able to consume the goods produced by its developing industries. The poor countries should provide the small landholders with low-cost credit and technical help; the farmers must also be allowed to charge enough for their crops to give them the material rewards for increased output. Labor-intensive manufacturing, using simple machinery--perhaps even the spinning wheel advocated by India's Mohandas Gandhi--should be located in rural areas to use productively the vast armies of underemployed.

> Limit population growth. The poor countries must recognize that they are--as U.S. Economist Rawle Farley puts it--in an "anxious race between demography and development." In nearly all the developing nations, the consumption demands of increased population are undermining even the best strategies for economic development. Egypt's Aswan High Dam, for instance, has added 25% to that country's arable land; yet, between 1955 when plans for the dam were conceived and 1970 when the project was completed, the population of the country swelled a staggering 50%, to more than 30 million.

> Reform education. School curriculums should stress vocational training. Because students have preferred to major in the humanities, arts and social sciences, most poor nations have plenty of lawyers and graduates in literature, but woefully few technicians and mechanics.

> Encourage entrepreneurs. Because of a widespread ideological commitment to the need for an "equitable" distribution of income, entrepreneurial initiative is frequently quashed--and with it, a dynamic needed to spur economic development. Many developing countries are hostile to business and take a dim view of profits; policies favoring featherbedding in order to cut unemployment rosters result in economic inefficiencies. The leaders of poor states may have to recognize that by choosing "equity," they may be delaying or even preventing development. Successful businessmen, skilled workers and innovators should be rewarded with high earnings, even if it means that their living standards rise more rapidly than the rest of the society's. Although incomes are increasingly unevenly distributed during the early stages of industrialization, they gradually become more equitable as development continues.

> Reject prestige projects. Instead of constructing huge sports stadiums, sprawling airports and sparkling conference halls, poor countries could invest in so-called bottleneck-breaking programs: transportation and communication infrastructures that spur efficient industrial and agricultural output.

> Encourage foreign investment. The LDCs' quickest route to First World capital, technology, research and marketing skills is probably through the local branch of a multinational corporation. Yet many developing countries seem determined to drive out the foreign investor. LDC rhetoric, for example, has made the multinational a pariah, branding it as the handmaiden of neocolonialist exploitation. Many corporation executives believe that laws could be enacted making the multinational responsive to local government without necessarily creating an environment hostile to foreign capital.

The Need for Dialogue

While there is much the poor must do for themselves, some obstacles are not easily overcome. Most of the poor nations, for example, are burdened with a tropical climate, which lowers both soil fertility and levels of human exertion. Many also lack the cultural milieu to reinforce individual initiative and social concern for progress. "What holds back many LDCs is the people who live there," says P.T. Bauer. "Material achievement depends primarily on people's attitudes, motivation and mores. In many LDCs, popular mores are often uncongenial to economic development; there is widespread fatalism and torpor and preference for a contemplative life." For many traditional African societies, work is considered only a means of survival rather than a way to improve one's living standard.

Even for the best-endowed Third and Fourth World states, development will be a long, slow process. "We warn those who today demand a fast redistribution of wealth not to be impatient," declared West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt in a recent New York speech. "In Europe, the process of industrialization has so far lasted about 200 years." Modern methods of agriculture, in fact, advanced through Europe in the 19th century at the snail's pace of only a few miles yearly.

There is much the world's developing states can learn from the First World. But this will require a dialogue rather than the hostility of the past two years. "It could go back to the jungle," warns a Harvard political scientist. "It is a toss-up whether the developing countries opt for economic progress or instead, for winning symbolic points by twitting the industrial states."

If the developing countries carry their tactics of harassment into this week's Paris conference and later into the four specialized commissions, they may be squandering an unprecedented opportunity to involve the First World in a new strategy for development. Those poor nations genuinely committed to economic growth rather than continuing a verbal assault on the First World may begin to discover that their self-interest lies with the industrial states rather than with the Group of 77.

The Paris conference is also an opportunity for the First World. There, and at next May's UNCTAD conference in Nairobi and the ongoing trade talks in Geneva, the North will have to demonstrate its readiness to consider reasonable requests for changes in the international economic system. If the developed countries seem unwilling to make any substantive concessions, the poor countries may well conclude that only a new wave of confrontation can bring gains.

Then Secretary of State Kissinger's warning to the U.N. last September may become prophetic: "The division of the planet between rich and poor could become as grim as the darkest days of the cold war."

* The U.S., Canada, the Common Market, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Japan and Australia from the First World; Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Indonesia, Venezuela and Nigeria from OPEC; and India, Pakistan, Yugoslavia, Egypt, Cameroon, Zaire, Zambia, Argentina. Brazil, Mexico, Peru and Jamaica from the developing world.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.