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Saudi foreign minister sounds alert on US-Saudi relations
Saudi Arabian Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal warned on Monday that US-Saudi relations were being dangerously undermined by misconceptions about alleged Saudi support for militant groups. In a speech to the Foreign Policy Association in New York, Prince Saud said he wanted to âsound the alert that the harmony of our long and fruitful relationship is threatened.â Blaming elements of the media for demonising his country, the foreign minister cited a recent clutch of books that sought to portray Saudi Arabiaâs internal social and political makeup as one that nurtures extremism and feeds terrorism. âNothing could be further from the truth,â he said. âAfter last weekâs events in Riyadh, I donât think any reasonable person can cast doubts about our commitment to waging a relentless war on terrorism.âWhile Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, Prince Saud stressed that his ideology and terrorist methodology had been developed in Afghanistan. Equating the actions and ideologies of the hijackers with those of the Saudi people as a whole was, Prince Saud argued, not only erroneous but also counter-productive in the war against terrorism. âIt is ironic that those who most vociferously attack Saudi Arabia are unwittingly serving the purposes of Al Qaeda ,â he said. âThe attacks lead to undermining a country that is probably most capable of not only waging the war against (Al Qaeda ), but also in preventing (Al Qaeda ) spreading their cultist ideology in the Islamic world.â Posted by: Dan Darling 2004-04-27 |
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