The United States agreed on Friday to help Saudi Arabia protect its oil industry from terrorist attack, while offering to back conservative Arab countries resisting Iranian influence spreading across the Middle East.
The White House announced new agreements with the kingdom as President George Bush flew to Riyadh for private talks with King Abdullah at his ranch outside the capital. But the king was not persuaded to boost Saudi oil production to ease the effect of the $127-a-barrel price on the US economy.
Bush arrived from Israel, where he spent two days celebrating its 60th anniversary, an event that brought the release on Friday of another threatening message from Saudi renegade and al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
”We will continue, God willing, the fight against the Israelis and their allies … and will not give up a single inch of Palestine as long as there is one true Muslim on Earth,” he declared in a 10-minute audio message posted on an Islamist website. The tape’s authenticity could not be verified but it bore the hallmarks of al-Sahab, al-Qaeda’s media arm.
”The participation of Western leaders with the Jews in this celebration confirms that the West backs this Jewish occupation of our land, and that they stand in the Israeli trench against us,” he said, claiming that the Palestinian issue had motivated the 9/11 attacks on the US.
Bin Laden, clearly aware of Palestine’s wider resonance, attaches more importance to the issue these days, having made little of it in public statements before 2001.
”Peace talks that started 60 years ago are just meant to deceive the idiots,” he said. ”After all the destruction and the killings … your leaders talk about principles. This is unbearable. You describe Palestinian organisations as terrorists and you boycott them and punish them while Israelis are killing civilians, women and children.”
Bush’s speech in the Knesset on Thursday lavished praise on Israel and excoriated its enemies — Hamas, Hezbollah in Lebanon, as well as Iran and Syria. But he barely mentioned the Palestinians, who were that same day marking the nakba (catastrophe) they suffered as the Jewish state won its independence in May 1948.
It will have confirmed many Arabs in their conviction that the US is irredeemably biased in favour of Israel.
US expectations for good news on oil had been low. The Saudis are bound by agreement with the rest of the Organisation of the Petroleum Exporting Countries.
”What they’re saying is … Saudi Arabia does not have customers that are making requests for oil that they are not able to satisfy,” said the US National Security Adviser, Stephen Hadley.
Bush made a similar pitch in January and was rebuffed. The Saudis want $1,4-billion in arms sales, which Democrats have threatened to block unless Riyadh agrees to increase oil production by one million barrels per day.
Bush was to fly to Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt, on Saturday for a meeting of the World Economic Forum. He would also meet the Palestinian President, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Egyptian President, Hosni Mubarak. — guardian.co.uk Â