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WASHINGTON (AFP) - President Bill Clinton will meet Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz in New York on Wednesday to discuss current oil prices, a senior U.S. official is reported to have said on Tuesday. "They will talk about the energy situation and the mutual interest in a fair balance between production and demand that creates stability," said U.S. national security advisor Sandy Berger. Clinton and Prince Abdullah will be in New York to attend a global summit at the UN. The prince will later travel to Latin America and attend an Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) summit in Caracas September 26-28. Oil prices ranged close to 10-year highs on Tuesday, prompting fresh calls for action from OPEC. A day after setting a new decade-long record of $32.80 a barrel in London, the price of a barrel of North Sea Brent eased slightly but benchmark crude was still fetching $32.50 in afternoon trading. The European Commission said the steep cost of oil was "unacceptable" and added that it was working on an action plan to counter recent market moves. But analysts now fear that even if the 11 OPEC nations send calming signals from their summit and start to pump more oil, the damage to industrial economies has already been done. U.S. reserves have dwindled dramatically, threatening shortages, and prices will take a lot of coaxing down, they say. Saudi Arabia recently said it favored an increase in OPEC output in a bid to stabilize prices. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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