Word: arabia
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...finance and oil ministers from the 13-member OPEC cartel was highly unusual. The Austrian capital is OPEC's administrative headquarters, but no meeting of oil ministers had been held there since December 1975, when pro-Palestinian terrorists kidnaped some of the delegates and held them hostage. Saudi Arabia's Oil Minister, Sheik Ahmed Zaki Yamani, the principal target of the 1975 raid, was taking no chances on a repeat performance. First he sent his private plane to Vienna's Schwechat Airport, and then let rumors circulate that he would arrive on Monday. In fact, he showed...
...brutal sun-the Persian, or Arabian Gulf, depending on the side of the water on which one stands. On either shore, the Arabian and Iranian plateaus form some of the most uninviting landscape anywhere: endless vistas of desert and rock, so desolate that in one stretch in Saudi Arabia it is known as Rub'al Khali-the Empty Quarter...
...consultation process between ruler and ruled, such consensus politics may not suffice for much longer. The rise of fundamentalist Islam as a political movement in Iran is not lost on the sheiks and emirs. At least two states-Kuwait and Bahrain-plan to revive consultative assemblies soon, while Saudi Arabia is in the process of forming a new assembly that will hold its first elections in the next year...
QATAR. Throughout the 4,400-sq.-mi. desert peninsula in eastern Arabia, the land does not rise higher than 360 ft. above sea level; the average annual rainfall is a scant 4 in., falling mostly in short cloudbursts in winter. Slowly, with great care, a modern state is being built. Qatar is one of the lesser oil producers in the gulf (411,000 bbl. a day), but the population is also small (250,000, of whom only 60,000 are native Qataris). The country has been found to have vast natural gas reserves, though at current prices development is considered...
...efforts have ended in failure. Moreover, few details of the new merger have been agreed upon. So far the new partnership has no name, no head of state, no constitution, no joint institutions, no capital city. Nonetheless, Syria's Foreign Minister Abdel Halim Khaddam was dispatched to Saudi Arabia and five other Arab states to seek their blessing and invite one and all to join...