OPEC siege members of OPEC were taken hostage in Vienna, Austria, where the ministers were attending a meeting at the OPEC headquarters at Dr-Karl-Lueger-Ring 10 (renamed Universitätsring in 2012). The hostage attack was orchestrated by a six-person team led by Venezuelan terrorist Carlos the Jackal (which included Gabriele Kröcher-Tiedemann, Hans-Joachim Klein and Anis al-Naqqash). The self-named "Arm of the Arab Revolution" group called for the liberation of Palestine. Carlos planned to take over the conference by force and kidnap all eleven oil ministers in attendance and hold them for ransom, with the exception of Ahmed Zaki Yamani and Iran's Jamshid Amuzegar, who
OPEC Iraqi prime minister Abd al-Karim Qasim, whose country had skipped the 1959 congress. Government representatives from Iran, Iraq, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela met in Baghdad to discuss ways to increase the price of crude oil produced by their countries, and ways to respond to unilateral actions by the MOCs. Despite strong US opposition: "Together with Arab and non-Arab producers, Saudi Arabia formed the Organization of Petroleum Export Countries (OPEC) to secure the best price available from the major oil corporations." The Middle Eastern members originally called for OPEC headquarters to be in Baghdad or Beirut, but Venezuela argued for