The Rich v. the Poor in Paris

"Not so long ago," said Algeria's Foreign Minister Abdelaziz Bouteflika, "today's event would have been an attempt to reconcile the irreconcilable." He was referring to the 35-nation Paris Conference on International Economic Cooperation, the long-awaited meeting of rich nations, poor countries and oil-producing' states (TIME, Dec. 22). Its purpose: to find ways to ease the increasingly desperate plight of the world's poorest states. After three days of speeches, private talks and public pronouncements, it was far from certain, despite Bouteflika's positive words, that the irreconcilable could be reconciled and that "the North-South cleavage," as he called it, could soon be overcome.

The Paris conference was never meant to be more than a ceremonial beginning. The real work will be done by four commissions over the next several months--or years. Yet the issues quickly became clear: the poor nations want a complete restructuring of the world's economy in their favor; the wealthy nations want to help them, but not so much as to make their own citizens suffer. More specifically, Secretary of State Henry Kissinger believes that the newly rich oil-producing countries, which have quintupled the price of oil since 1973, are to blame for much of the economic anguish in the underdeveloped world and should share the burden.

The seven members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries at the conference--Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Algeria, Indonesia, Venezuela and Nigeria--made ritual and occasionally heated objections to Kissinger's arguments. "Blaming the world's difficulties on [the oil producers'] actions and decisions not only is unconvincing," said

Iran's Interior Minister Jamshid Amouzegar, "but plays no useful purpose in this dialogue." Kissinger, however, was not really telling the OPEC nations that they should drastically roll back the price of oil. Rather, his aim seemed to be to drive a wedge between the oil producers and the truly poor. If that was indeed the American strategy, it had little success: the oil-producing states dominated their poorer brethren in the conference's deliberations. Four commissions were set up to examine the world's economic problems--under broad headings of energy, development, raw materials and financial questions--with co-chairmen from both developed and less developed nations. OPEC members took three commissions; only one went to a non-oil-producing country, Peru.

Mildly Hopeful. The commissions will start work on Feb. 11. A second conference of all the nations represented is tentatively scheduled for the end of next year. The U.S. is mildly hopeful that something positive will be accomplished, although none of the industrial states are likely to go along with a radical reordering of the world's economic structure. Kissinger has adopted a wait-and-see attitude. His proposals were primarily an elaboration of those presented at the United Nations in September. They included plans for using the International Monetary Fund to underwrite low export earnings in the developing countries and opening capital markets to the poor nations. French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing, who had strongly promoted the conference, was also cautious. In the face of a "muted possibility of confrontation and selfishness," he said, "it would be illusory to underestimate the difficulties."

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