FEISAL: Oil embargo against U.S. 'irrevocable’

Press, Volume CXIII, Issue 33386, 19 November 1973, Page 15

FEISAL: Oil embargo against U.S. 'irrevocable’

r.v.Z. Press Association—Copyright) BEIRUT, November 18. King Feisal of Saudi Arabia has been quoted as reiterating that his oil embargo against the United States was “irrevocable,” the Associated Press reported. “Only when Israel withdraws entirely from all the Arab regions it conquered in 1967, including the Arab sector of Jerusalem, will the Saudi oil ban can be lifted,” the 69-year-old monarch was quoted as saying.

His statement, as reported by the Beirut newspaper “Al Anwar,” at least partially contradicted President Nixon’s prediction that the Arab oil embargo would be eased.

Other Arab leaders have yet to be heard.

“Al Anwar” said that King Feisal made the statement during a meeting he had in Riyadh, the Saudi capital, on Friday with visiting Lebanese former Prime Minister, Mr Saeb Salam.

The king was reported to have said that he regarded •he United States as the only country in the world that could pressure Israel into a! complete withdrawal "because America is Israel’s only political backer and arms supplier.” “I have told the Americans we want decisive action and ouick and early results,” King Feisal was quoted as saying. King Feisal was also quoted as telling Mr Salam that the Saudi position on the oil embargo and Israel’s withdrawal was put clearly to the United States Secretary of State, Dr Henry Kissinger, during his talks with the monarch early this month. The King was quoted as saying that he had rejected a Kissinger proposal that a partial Israeli withdrawal be brought about in three stages from Egypt’s Sinai Desert, Syria’s Golan Heights and Jordan’s west bank within one year.

“Kissinger said that he believed the Arab countries should in the meantime cooperate with the United States so that the United States can in turn play its role in helping to bring the plan off,” King Feisal was reported to have said. King Feisal- was quoted as telling his Lebanese guest that he gave Dr Kissinger this answer: “The Israeli withdrawal should be total, not partial, and we shall never accept an Israel presence in the Arab part of Jerusalem. Ft fact, we insist that Israel withdraws first from Jerusalem and then from the other occupied Arab territories." “As for the one-year dead-

[line proposed for the withdrawal it is unacceptable. We ' insist that it should be brought about within numbered weeks after the pull-out from Jerusalem. We hold the United States responsible foi the Israeli withdrawal. "As for the oil embargo, it is a final and irrevocable decision that would be altered only when the total Israeli withdrawal is completed and the legitimate rights of the Palestinian people are restored.” King Feisal then told Mr Salam that the restoration of Arab Jerusalem was the King’s "most cherished

dream. I want to pray in Jerusalem's "Al Aksa” mosque before I die and I am prepared to give everything I have to bring this dream about,” he was quoted as saying. Paris not popular.-—More than half of all Parisians would like to leave- the French capital and escape to the provinces, according to a poll published in Paris. The chief grouse is the city’s traffic problem — 60 per cent rated parking as their No. 1 anxiety.—Paris, Noy. 18,