After the North-South Dialogue

...And those who were serious about improving relations, despite their not always acting accordingly, came to realize this could be achieved solely through compromise, without either side being fully satisfied...

...The last day-and-a-half was spent attempting to pick up the pieces and put them back into roughly their original pattern—an effort that did not wholly succeed yet was not a total failure either...

...What actually happened did to some extent reflect the differing interests among the 19 developing countries, yet was more complex...

...Not surprisingly, the unheralded beneficiary of the North-South Dialogue was the Soviet Union...

...But solidarity prevailed, and given the united opposition, the West could not and would not cede as much as the underdeveloped countries wanted...

...Besides a $1-billion assistance Eliahuu Salpeter is currently European correspondent of Ha'aretz...

...Yet it seems a few days is all that can be spared by the top-level ministers who until now have been the only ones able to make the necessary decisions...

...On the negative side, the Third World wanted more Western investments yet would not provide effeclive guarantees to ensure their safety...

...In short, the moderates joined the extremists in trying to wield the "oil weapon" to make the "rich" wince once again...

...One of the most important lessons of the Paris gathering, therefore, was that where vital and very intricate multilateral issues are at stake, new methods and techniques of negotiation have to be evolved...

...Neither the more conservative opec members nor the developing nations that had the most to lose were wise or firm enough to forgo the jingoism that almost wrecked the conference...

...At the same time, it was made clear that there would be no energy supply and pricing consultation body set up in exchange for Western concessions...

...Saudi Arabia was unhappy at the prospect of having its hand forced by others in matters of oil pricing and production...

...That optimism continued during the first two days of the talks, when the first signs emerged of an understanding that just as the Third World had a right to more from the industrialized world than it has so far received, the West has a legitimate interest in the stability of energy supplies...

...With unemployment still critically high and/or with adverse trade balances, the industrialized states feared that lower tariff barriers for cheap textiles, plastics and transistors would merely increase their own jobless rates and payment deficits...

...Crisis struck on the third day: The Third World renewed many of its more extreme demands, including the indexing of raw material prices to counter inflationary losses, the obligatory allocation of at least 0.7 per cent of the GNP of all technologically advanced countries to their poorer brethren, and contributions to a commodity stabilization fund even before its details were agreed upon...

...But the West declined to make advance commitments on the size of the commodity fund...

...There, of course, lies both the power and the weakness of the underdeveloped world: The many possessing no oil depend for their strength on the few who do—and must pay for this dependence by supporting price policies that conceivably harm them more than they harm the West...

...Then, suddenly, there was an outburst of optimism: The meeting would not only be held as planned, but there was a strong chance of success as a result of last-minute concessions signaled by both camps...

...Moreover, significant progress was evident even before the final session started...

...Perhaps they would rather be exploited by the nonwhite rich than by the white countries experiencing inflation, unemployment and a host of other ills...

...It firmly resisted, too, any moratorium on the developing nations' debts...

...This means, on the one hand, that a moratorium would benefit mostly the better-off...

...In fact, just a few weeks prior to the already rescheduled May 31 opening of the concluding meeting, it had appeared a further delay would be necessary to allow for additional preparatory discussions...

...True, also, several of the developing countries, notably India, would have welcomed a way to slow down the oil price rise...

...Both the eight participants representing the industrial West and the 19 from the developing states felt they got less than they expected...

...it came, instead, from Algeria, acting out of largely political rather than economic motives...

...On the positive side, the industrialized nations did ultimately agree in theory to a price-supporting commodity stabilization fund for the raw materials that much of the Third World sells and depends on...

...Ironically, the latter included some of the wealthiest oil producers, upon whom the truly poor had scant influence for meeting their own needs, much less those of the industrialized nations...

...fund for the neediest nations, the industrialized governments finally agreed in principle to the creation of a commodity stabilization fund...

...Since the lists of desiderata included such Utopian items as guaranteed access to raw materials and a fairer distribution of wealth, it is more useful, in attempting an accurate measure of the conference, to examine the areas where real bargaining occurred...

...They asked that this mechanism deal as well with "technology transfer" (the new, more respectable name for accelerated technical aid)—a linkage that suited the West, since it would remind the less well-off of the intimate connection between the price of oil and the ability of the "rich" economies to aid their development...

...Yet it may be worth remembering when one asks who was really interested in the only partly patchedover last-minute crisis...

...For one thing, although European diplomats had managed to scare themselves silly about the horrible consequences if the talks failed, a large majority of developing countries became aware that it was in its best interest to avoid a head-on collision...

...So when a "tentative draft" condemning the industrialized countries was leaked in Paris hotel lobbies, Western representatives said they would respond by withdrawing the concessions they had already made...

...As usual, a number of the Third World diplomats tried to blame the worsened situation on irresistible pressure from oil producers rejecting any interference with their business procedures...

...After 18 months of jockeying, new worldwide terms of trade, credit and development could not be settled in three or four days of tense negotiations, especially at a huge gathering where each camp had several different and often opposing elements—Saudi Arabia and India, for example...

...The Europeans were worried lest an all-out breakdown provide an excuse for a new wave of fuel price hikes...

...But the postmortems have possibly been bleaker than warranted...

...True, the most vehement opposition to the idea of a new energy forum did not come from Saudi Arabia or Iran...

...And the poorest of the Third World are simply too badly off to renounce $1 billion today in the hope of possibly greater sums tomorrow, either from opec or from larger raw material incomes...

...The final "balance sheet" shows headway made on 20 issues and none made on 21...

...Some opec officials, however, hinted that the trouble came from the least developed countries, who opposed any arrangements affecting the power of the oil leverage to exact higher raw material prices...

...As for the limited scope of the progress made, a chief factor was the essentially one-way-street premise that seemed to dominate the entire Dialogue: AH the "give" apparently was to be done by the West (still suffering from exorbitant fuel prices), while all the "take" belonged to the underdeveloped world...

...Thus it remains fashionable to bemoan the opportunities lost by the West or to speak in desperation of the excessive demands by the underdeveloped countries...

...In the tumult caused by the third-day breakdown, this point seems to have been completely forgotten...

...The bind the West finds itself in was dramatized by its unwillingness to open up its markets to the manufactured goods of the developing nations...

...For another, the need for a new framework of relationships between the two sides was established, no matter how slow and painstaking the process may prove to be...

...But the real reason for the third day's crisis was that when faced with taking home results below their original hopes, most of the 19 found temptation too difficult to resist...

...Further, a collective $1 billion was put up (one third by the U.S., one third by the European Economic Community, and one third by other industrial nations) to ease the pressure on the hardest-hit among the underdeveloped, and aid was offered for specific growth projects...

...Interestingly, of the $170-200 billion debt figure mentioned, about 20 per cent is owed by the very poorest countries...

...Whatever the case, the West failed to convince them that their true interests lie with the "North...

...THE NEED FOR A NEW FRAMEWORK After the North-South Dialogue by ELIAHU SALPETER Paris After 18 months of Up and down bargaining, the so-called North-South Dialogue—the 27-nation Conference on International Economic Cooperation and Development between the world's "rich" and "poor" countries—ended here last June 3 amid great disappointment...

...Or perhaps the poorest nations believe that in the long run they have more to gain from loyalty to the wealthier parts of the Third World than from the goodwill of the industrialized world...

...Some had hoped the conflicting interests among the Third World haves and have-nots would turn the conference into a two-way street...

...Clearly, the problems facing a working relationship between the two sides at the conference were serious and complicated—too much so to be adequately dealt with under the threat of an overdramatized (and, one suspects, artificial) crisis such as occurred on the third day of the Paris meeting...

...For tie United States this was the first test of President Jimmy Carter's approach to the developing world...

...Complete failure was averted because most of the participating governments had too much at stake...

...For their part, the developing countries indicated a willingness to support a permanent mechanism for consultation on energy supplies and costs that would, the West hoped, restrain opec price increases...

...on the other, it is evidence that the nations having no oil carry a burden entirely disproportionate to their capacities...

...Nor was it willing, as the conference dosed, to support the creation of an energy forum—one of the main objectives behind French President Valery Giscard d'Estaing's proposal for the North-South Dialogue...

...President Carter and his colleagues at the recent London Summit tried to focus attention on the fact that the Communist bloc systematically refuses to bear its share of the industrialized world's aid burden...

...It would be a mistake to underestimate the advances made in the last days of negotiations—whether one favored the grandiose "New World Economic Order" propounded by the developing nations, or the more modest notions of the industrialized world for stabilizing supplies and prices in the global trade of raw materials and energy...

...A second lesson for the West was that the underdeveloped countries do hang together...