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On the other hand, Fahd may be more willing than Faisal to accept the existence of Israel as a permanent state in the Middle East, provided that the Israelis relinquish all the territory they seized during the Six-Day War and that they reach an accommodation with the Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia's policy toward the U.S. and its oil diplomacy are not expected to change, at least for the present. The outgoing, expansive Prince Fahd, whose views are much better known than those of King Khalid, favors economic cooperation with the U.S. and represents his country on a joint U.S.-Saudi commission set up last year to plan economic and technical cooperation. Fahd also serves as acting chairman of the Saudis' Petroleum Council, which drafts oil and oil-revenue policy for the King's consideration. (In this capacity he is said to have developed a cordial dislike for able Oil Minister Yamani.) For several months, the Saudis have been negotiating a complete takeover of Aramco, the giant petroleum-producing company, of which they now own 60%. Fahd has acknowledged the un favorable impact of high oil prices on Western economies. Nonetheless, Saudi Arabia is not likely to break OPEC solidarity.
A few weeks ago, Prince Fahd promised flatly that the price of Saudi oil would drop if a peace settlement could be achieved in the Middle East. A settlement, he told members of the TIME news tour (TIME, Feb. 10), would "enable us to work seriously on real problems instead of killing ourselves. The price of oil would then come down, just as the prices of other commodities would come down." He advocated closer relationships between the industrial and oil-producing nations and insisted that the last thing the Saudi government wanted to do was cause a further increase in the price of oil "that would threaten the economies of our friends in the U.S. or Europe."
Internally, Khalid and Fahd will continue the ambitious development Saudi Arabia has set for the next decade based on its oil revenues ($28.9 billion last year). Industrialization will inevitably add to the pressures on the regime to relax Faisal's insistence upon conformity to Islamic laws. So will the presence of up to 2 million foreign workers and dependents in a country whose own population is only 5.7 million.
In his most eloquent moments, Prince Fahd speaks of turn ing Saudi Arabia into the Middle East's most advanced wel fare state. Like the late King, he feels the country should be run in a paternalistic and authoritarian style — and that political evolution should be deliberately paced. "Our approach is ex actly opposite to that of Atatürk of Turkey," Fahd told friends recently. "Atatürk imposed changes on his people from the top. We try to act as a catalyst, giving the people a glimpse of change and letting them decide to accept it."
* Strict Islamic law forbids the representation of a human image in any form.