Description
FOR OVER TWO DECADES, AS BOTH THE OIL MINISTER FOR SAUDI Arabia and the leading force behind OPEC, Ahmed Zaki Yamani was the star player in the world's biggest business. This, his controversial biography, reached the top of the best-seller lists in England.
IN 1962, WHEN OIL WAS $2 A BARREL, KING FAISAL APPOINTED the then shy thirty-two-year-old lawyer to be the Minister of Petroleum. Over the next eleven years he wrestled control of Saudi Arabia's oil away from the Americans and turned the OPEC cartel into a major force around the world. In Octo ber 1973, when war broke out in the Middle East, Yamani was the man who held the world to ransom for oil. In March 1975 he was standing next to Faisal when the Saudi King was assassinated. In December 1975 he was kidnapped by the international terrorist Carlos and nearly murdered- and from that day on he was more closely guarded than the Queen of England. During the panic years of the late 1970s and into the oil glut years of the 1980s, Saudi Arabia's highest-ranking nonroyal fought to keep a fragile OPEC together while at the same time desperately attempting to stabilize the world oil prices.
ARMED WITH THE CUNNING OF A BEDOUIN AND THE RUTHLESS skills of an international lawyer, he globe-trotted the inter- national scene and accumulated an enormous personal for- tune. A strictly observant Moslem at home, a discreet, Western-style bon vivant in Europe and America, he made friends in the West while he made enemies at home. By the end of 1985, Yamani had outstripped Gromyko as the longest-serving cabinet minister of any country in the world. But in 1986, a terse one-sentence edict brought his political career to an end...
ISBN:9780871133236