Gulf Cooperation Council Will Meet Twice a Year for Improved Coordination of Positions and Efforts

By Andrew I. Killgore

Visitors to the 19th Arabian Gulf Cooperation Council (AGCC) sessions held in Abu Dhabi’s Intercontinental Hotel on Dec. 7, 8 and 9 found the UAE’s capital city lavishly decorated with colorful lights and the national flags of the six member states. The displays marked the UAE’s National Day, but they also provided a dramatic backdrop for the conference, making Western visitors feel that the Christmas lights they had left behind at home had been magically transported to the Arab Gulf.

The actual sessions between the six leaders of the Arab states of the Gulf, Sheikh Issa bin Salman Al Khalifa of Bahrain, Sheikh Jaber Al Ahmad Al Sabah of Kuwait, Sultan Qaboos of Oman, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani of Qatar, Crown Prince Abdallah bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud of Saudi Arabia and Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan of the UAE, were held behind closed doors. But from what could be seen from the outside and heard at a post-conference press briefing held by UAE Foreign Minister Rashed Abdallah and AGCC Secretary-General Jameel al-Hujailan, any inter-country differences discussed were resolved.

The conference extended Hujailan’s term as secretary-general for three more years from April 1999. Only three years earlier, the secretary-generalship was such a sensitive point that Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa of Qatar left that year’s conference early when he thought his country’s turn to provide the AGCC’s top officer had been unfairly skipped over.

Conference host Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan pushed hard at the meetings to expand the Arab and Muslim presence on the world stage, and succeeded. Two world players, South African President Nelson Mandela and U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan, attended and spoke at Sheikh Zayed’s invitation.

Sheikh Zayed also used the occasion to renew his personal campaign to convince Arab and Muslim leaders from all over the world to increase the frequency and importance of their regularly scheduled conferences to coordinate their positions and efforts on matters of import to their peoples.

The assembled AGCC leaders responded by agreeing to meet twice a year in the future rather than only once a year as at present.

Although AGCC members agreed to continue their current voluntary limitations on oil production levels, the change to two annual meetings might also be interpreted as an AGCC warning to high-cost and marginal oil producers to limit their production levels. Otherwise the AGCC countries, who together possess half of the world’s petroleum reserves, could flood the market with so much oil that prices would resume their downward course. This could result in the “marginals” actually losing money on every barrel of oil produced.

The AGCC countries, however, are not in an enviable position, and not just because petroleum prices are extraordinarily low. Formed in 1981 under the impact of the 1980-1988 Iraq-Iran war, the AGCC faces a region and a world dramatically changed in the past 17 years.

The Cold War is over, leaving a heavily Israeli-influenced United States the sole remaining superpower. Iraq, which brutally attacked an AGCC member, Kuwait, in 1990, is still led by its dangerous and unpredictable President, Saddam Hussain. And the divided mullahs who lead the Islamic Republic of Iran show no willingness to negotiate “the islands issue,” meaning the forcible seizure in 1971 of the UAE-owned Abu Musa and Greater and Lesser Tunb islands.

American security protection in the Gulf is privately welcomed, but AGCC leaders realize that the Arab “street” resents the need for it because of U.S. favoritism for Israel and the American-backed U.N. sanctions that have caused so much suffering for the Iraqi people.

Long-time UAE President Zayed is a forceful and extremely generous leader and his country, despite its relatively small area and population, contains nearly 10 percent of the world oil reserves. It has become his personal campaign to mobilize all Arabs and Muslims to coordinate their efforts to create for themselves greater political and economic weight in international affairs.

Crown Prince Abdallah, who led the Saudi Arabian delegation, also is highly respected by the Arab rulers, both for his personal character and for his demonstrated leadership qualities. But at present Saudi Arabia’s obvious potential to lend its weight and prestige to Sheikh Zayed’s initiative for much closer cooperation among the world’s Arabs and Muslims is limited by the fragile health of the ruler, King Fahd. This necessitates division of the duties of ruling Saudi Arabia, with Crown Prince Abdullah required to step in, sometimes on a week-to-week or day-by-day basis, when King Fahd is unable to carry out some of his responsibilities, particularly those involving travel or exhausting ceremonial duties.

Aside from the enormous budgetary problems created by the sharp drop in oil prices since the previous AGCC meeting, there seemed to be no new problems facing the leaders. Instead, with more frequent AGCC summits scheduled, it appears that the AGCC will become increasingly active as a nucleus for significant joint political initiatives among the world’s more than 50 Islamic states.

Andrew I. Killgore, a retired career foreign service officer and former U.S. ambassador to Qatar, is the publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.