The little Saudi surprise: So it stings. Live with it.
By Helene Cooper
International Herald Tribune
Published: March 29, 2007
iht.com
WASHINGTON: American officials said Thursday that they were caught off guard by remarks by the Saudi king condemning the American intervention in Iraq as "an illegal foreign occupation" and were seeking clarification. But they sought to tamp down tensions over the comments.
"We were a little surprised to see those remarks," Nicholas Burns, the under secretary of state for political affairs, told a Senate hearing, referring to the statement by King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia at the opening of an Arab League summit meeting in Riyadh on Wednesday. "We disagree with them."
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice scheduled a telephone call with Saudi Arabia's ambassador to the United States, Adel al-Jubeir, who was traveling to Riyadh, an administration official said.
The official said the State Department had resisted going straight to Rice's counterpart, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, so as to try to lower the temperature of the rhetoric. He said Rice planned to question Jubeir about the Saudi monarch's remarks.
The Bush administration had been bending over backwards in recent weeks not to criticize Saudi Arabia, partly because it is hoping that Saudi leadership will help stem the rising influence of Iran.
And for the moment, Saudi and other Arab officials said the king's statements should be seen in that context, an effort to position himself to get the leverage he needs in the Arab world.
"He knew it would be a popular thing to say — the American occupation is one of the most unpopular facts on the Arab streets," said one Saudi official in Riyadh with close ties to the royal family. He allowed that "we don't want the Americans just to drop Iraq and leave; we would hold the Americans responsible for the damage if that happens."
But he added that for the long term, if Saudi Arabia is going to lead the Arab world and serve as a counterbalance to Iran, the Saudi monarchy cannot be seen as supporting a foreign occupation in Arab land.
In fact, King Abdullah has warned American officials, including Vice President Dick Cheney, that Saudi Arabia might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq's Shiites if the United States pulled its troops out of Iraq.
Last fall, as a growing chorus in Washington advocated a draw-down of American troops in Iraq, coupled with a diplomatic outreach to the largely Shiite Iran, Saudi Arabia, which considers itself the leader of the Sunni Arab world, argued strenuously against an American pullout from Iraq, citing fears that Iraq's minority Sunni Arab population would be massacred.
But that is a difficult position for Saudi Arabia to support publicly.
"Everybody assumes that America is a big boy, and big boys have to put up with things," said Ziad Asali, president of the American Task Force on Palestine. He pointed to the closeness of the relationship between the Bush administration and the Saudi royal family, particularly Prince Bandar, the former Saudi ambassador to the United States, who is well known in Washington for his access to the White House.
The assumption, he said, is that the relationship can withstand a gentle whack or two. "But I think that assumption runs the risk of making things unpleasant," he said.
Administration officials were already angry after Saudi Arabia brokered a power-sharing agreement between the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas, whom American officials viewed as a moderate, and the militant Islamist group Hamas, which the United States and Israel both view as a terrorist organization.
Privately, administration officials say the pact, reached in Mecca, ruined newly hatched American plans to try to restart peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians.
But no administration official said that publicly because the Saudi path is so central to the American effort in the region. In fact, every time Rice mentioned the Mecca accord, she took pains to say that she "welcomed the king's efforts to end the violence between Palestinians," even as she criticized Hamas for not recognizing Israel's right to exist.
Similarly, when American officials got wind of King Abdullah's speech on Wednesday, they were muted, first telling reporters to make sure there was not a mistranslation.
Even by Thursday, when it had become clear that the Saudi King had indeed criticized the American presence in Iraq, the State Department spokesman Sean McCormack was mild in his public comments. "We want to understand more clearly what it is exactly that he had in mind when he talked about an illegal occupation" was the furthest that McCormack would go in publicly challenging the Saudi statement.
Simon Henderson, the director of gulf and energy policy at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said the very use of the phrase "illegal occupation" legitimizes the attacks on American troops in Iraq.
Arab officials said the United States had put enormous pressure on the Saudis by calling on them to make a peace overture to Israel, as Rice did Tuesday in Jerusalem.
While the Arab League did reaffirm a 2002 land-for-peace proposal for settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict at their meeting in Riyadh on Thursday, many Arab officials have expressed anger that Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert balked at allowing new peace talks with Abbas. Those talks are being brokered by Rice to include the "final status" issues that have bedeviled peace negotiators since 1979.
Part of King Abdullah's criticism of the United States and Israel in his speech, some Arab officials said, stemmed from anger that Rice could not get more from Israel.
"The Israelis want to win the lottery without paying for a ticket," said Jamal Khashoggi, a former Saudi Embassy adviser in Washington. "The lottery is normalized relations with Saudi Arabia, but first they must pay for the ticket by reaching an agreement with the Palestinians." |
