The Press WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 1975. Oil on the agenda

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 33819, 16 April 1975, Page 20

The Press WEDNESDAY, APRIL 16, 1975. Oil on the agenda

The talks between oil producers and oil importers in Paris, intended to decide on an agenda for a world conference, have turned into the usual confrontation between the developing nations and the developed. The oil exporters want the conference to talk about all raw materials, the Western industrial countries want the conference to concentrate on oil. The French? who want the talks to succeed, will need all the diplomatic ability they can mdster to avoid a deadlock. As the increased price of oil is the reason the consumers want talks, so it is the reason the producers want the conference to give equal emphasis to all raw materials. The underdeveloped countries have been badly hit by the price rise — which, according to one estimate, will cost them SUSIO billion a year — and the producers wish to avoid the impression that they are becoming rich at the cost of the world’s poor. One way they have tried to repair the damage is by giving aid — perhaps as much as SUSIO billion has been promised, though less than a third has been paid, and that has not been spread evenly. Most of this aid has been bilateral, but through the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries the oil exporters have made a special oil fund available to help countries pay their oil bills. The third way of repairing the damage has been by championing the causes of the Third World, seeking to make the industrialised countries pay more for raw materials, and urging the formation of commodity cartels on the model of O.P.E.C. The United States and other industrialised countries are unlikely to give way. They want, first of all, to discuss the price of oil, which is upsetting all their economies and which is partly responsible for the recession they are all having. They do not want to get bogged down m what they would see as fruitless and endless discussions about the prices of raw materials and prices of their own manufactured goods. Nor would any of the developed countries want to encourage the forming of any more cartels. But the United States in particular, will want to avoid offending France, the host, with which its relations have already been strained over oil policies and whose attitudes will be crucial to the success of any moves against oil embargoes. For these reasons the talks in Paris are likely to remain unresolved — winded as it were, rather than completely knocked out.