Guerrillas invade O.P.E.C. meeting, seize Ministers

Press, Volume CXV, Issue 34032, 22 December 1975, Page 1

Guerrillas invade O.P.E.C. meeting, seize Ministers

(N.Z.P.A.-Reuter—Copyright) VIENNA, December 21. At least two people were killed when four unidentified men and a young woman armed with submachine guns stormed the headquarters of the Organisation of Petroleum-Exporting Counries (0.P.E.C.) in the middle of a conference of oil Ministers today.

A senior police officer said about 30 people were being held hostage by the terrorists, who included one woman, the Associated Press said.

The hostages included the Saudi Arabian Oil Minister (Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani) and Iran’s Interior Minister and Chief O.P.E.C. delegate (Jamshid Amouzegar). N.Z.P.A.-Reuter reported that the attack came as the O.P.E.C. Ministers were conferring for the second day on problems of price-cutting. The only Minister not present at the time of the shooting was the Oil Minister of the United Arab Emirates (Mana Saeed Al-Oteiba), who was outside the building. Other O.P.E.C. countries are Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Iraq, Iran, Venezuela, Nigeria, Indonesia, Qatar, Libya, Ecuador, Algeria, and Gabon. N.Z.P.A.-Reuter said police headquarters had confirmed that two people had been killed and one seriously in-

jured, but officers ringing the building said they feared other dead and wounded were still lying inside the building. Communique Police headquarters said the attackers had handed over a communique in French. “We don’t know yet what’s in it. We have to have it translated first,” a spokesman said. The shooting, on the first floor of the Texaco building on Vienna’s Ringstrasse that houses the 13-nation oilexporter cartel, took place shortly before 1100 G.M.T. Within a few minutes ambulance men arrived on the scene. Reporters saw them carry out a wounded man on a stretcher. The man was described by ambulance men as an Austrian employed in the administrative section of O.P.E.C. headquarters. He was bleeding from a neck wound, and appeared unconscious. . . « “Not yet*’ When asked whether he was dead, an ambulance man replied: “Not yet.” Later, the Austrian Press Agency reported that a plainclothes policeman was killed in the shooting. There was no immediate indication of the identity of the gunmen, nor was the objective of their attack known.

From witnesses’ -descriptions it appeared that the shots heard by several other

reporters were fired from the entrance hall of the first-floor O.P.E.C. headquarters into administrative offices grouped around a corridor leading to the left. No shots were apparently fired down the opposite, right-hand end of the corridor leading to the conference room. In the conference room, member delegations were discussing tricky price issues. A police official said that one of the hostages was released soon after the seizure with a note, apparently from the terrorists. She is Miss Griselda Carey, secretary to O.P.E.C.’s general-secretary

(Chief M. O. Fevide, of Nigeria). There was speculation that the note contained ransom demands. Vienna has been the scene of two recent outrages. In September, 1973, two Arab gunmen seized three Israel-bound Jews and an Austrian Customs official. The gunmen released the hostages and flew to Libya after Chancellor Kreisky, of Austria, promised to close the Shoenau transit camp processing Soviet Jews bound for Israel. In October this year, the Turkish Ambassador to Austria (Mr Danis Tunaligil) was machine-gunned to death in his Embassy. The three gunmen who took part in the assassination have not been caught.