OIL: Arab Victory

In his elegant Manhattan hotel suite, the bearded, Harvard-educated Arab signed his initials to an international treaty that has vast political and economic implications. "The agreement is very satisfactory to me," he said. Well it should be. Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, Saudi Arabia's 42-year-old oil minister, had just realized the decades-old Arab dream of gaining control over the vast pools of oil beneath the Middle East's deserts. Last week's agreement allows the five Persian Gulf states of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, Iraq and Abu Dhabi to buy an immediate 20% interest in foreign oil-producing operations in their lands. Most...