Word: saudi
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...There are two currency counters and enough calculators to ensure that Kuwait Inc. functions to the proper decimal points. A shredder sits near a large safe, opposite a small television set. But CNN, which everyone is eager to watch, is available only on another TV, two floors up -- a Saudi concession, since the kingdom prohibits the public reception of CNN everywhere else...
...people of the Arabian shore of the Persian Gulf led a life little different from the one their ancestors had led since the advent of Islam. During migrations in search of water and trading locations, mainly from the Najd region of what is today the central part of Saudi Arabia, a group of tribes called the Bani Utub settled the town of Kuwait (in simple translation, Little Fort) in the early 1700s. With trade the major source of income, the tribes established a unique political system. Of the three most , influential families, the Khalifas and the Jalahimas concerned themselves with...
...dead last. But nothing about the Persian Gulf crisis is ordinary, and some angry national and international arguments are breaking out about what, at least in part, are questions of accounting: How much more will the Pentagon really have to spend on Operation Desert Shield? Are certain allies, notably Saudi Arabia, getting rich from the crisis or actually losing money? Are others, pre-eminently Germany and Japan, falling behind even on their relatively piddling pledges...
...this resentment justified? As always when accounting is involved, the answers can get murky. Senator Paul Sarbanes, a Maryland Democrat, angrily charges Saudi Arabia with "reaping a windfall gain of something on the order of $40 billion" from the crisis by stepping up oil production and selling crude at higher prices. Other estimates run up to $50 billion a year. Western diplomats in Riyadh assert, however, that such calculations assume a price of $30 per bbl. maintained for a full year and that current prices are well below that. They estimate the Saudi windfall at $8 billion to $10 billion...
Estimating how much of this windfall the Saudis have contributed to the anti-Saddam effort is tricky too. One problem, which also crops up with other allies, is how to figure contributions in kind. Riyadh has given the U.S. an open-ended commitment to supply all the fuel, water and electric needs of the U.S. forces operating there, but how should oil supplied to American troops be valued -- at the price it might fetch if sold on the world market or at Saudi production costs, which may be as low as 50 cents per bbl. of crude? By some estimates...