3 - The advanced capitalist countries

Summary

At the moment of independence in November 1967 South Yemen was granted diplomatic recognition by the major industrialised countries of the west – Britain, the USA, France, West Germany and Japan. Its entry into the UN on 14 December 1967 was unopposed and was welcomed by, among others, the representatives of the UK and the USA. In October 1969 it joined the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank. Yet from the beginning, its relations with the OECD states had an ambivalent character: while South Yemen continued to conduct the majority of its trade with these countries, and to maintain diplomatic relations with most of them, it was in sustained conflict with them on political issues. This was not so much due to the legacy of the pre-independence years: though some issues of conflict with Britain inherited from this period remained, they gradually subsided and were not prominent features of South Yemen's post-1967 foreign policy. Nor was it due to conflicts over developments internal to South Yemen itself- the country remained, as it had been before independence, of limited intrinsic interest to the developed countries of the west: there were few disputes over investment, citizens of these countries, or the political character of the regime. Most criticism of developments within the PDRY came from Amnesty International, the independent human rights organisation, which was repeatedly critical of judicial and prison procedures in South Yemen.