Saudi Arabia moved quickly on Monday to reassure the world that the death of King Fahd would not bring turmoil or a sudden change of direction to the world’s largest oil exporter. Crown Prince Abdullah, who had been in day-to-day charge for almost a decade after a stroke incapacitated the king, was immediately declared monarch.
Saudi Arabia’s ruler, King Fahd, died early on Monday in a Riyadh hospital where he was admitted on May 27 for unspecified medical tests. His brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, has been announced the country’s new monarch, the Saudi royal court said in a statement.
Security forces have killed 15 Islamic militants in four days, including three on the most-wanted list, in the most intensive fighting seen to date in Saudi Arabia’s two-year war on terror — a sign the kingdom may have al-Qaeda on the defensive. Interior Minister Prince Nayef warned militants: ”Either come back to your senses or you’ll face death.”
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/ 30 November 2004
A Saudi man divorced his wife after she insisted on waiting 13 hours at an airport to take a flight that kept being delayed, the Saudi daily al-Yaum said on Tuesday. The couple waited from 9am until 11pm last weekend to take a flight at the Bisha airport in the south of the Saudi kingdom.
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/ 20 September 2004
A scathing United States report on religious freedoms, accusing Saudi Arabia of backing anti-Jewish and anti-Christian campaigns, met with stony silence last week from the government in Riyadh. But a member of the appointed Shura (consultative) Council lashed out at the State Department charges, insisting that freedom of belief is respected in the conservative Muslim kingdom.
Eight consortia, including SA cellphone giant MTN, are in the race for a second cellphone operator licence in Saudi Arabia. Revenues in the lucrative Saudi market, which has about eight million mobile users with a growth rate of about 30%, are predicted to soar to ,9-billion by 2007.
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/ 9 November 2003
At least five people died and some 100 were wounded when a midnight suicide car bombing tore apart an Arab housing compound west of Riyadh, officials said on Sunday, blaming the al-Qaeda terror network. The atrocity came the same day the US closed its missions in Saudi Arabia for a security review after warning of possible attacks.
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/ 16 September 2003
Investigators ruled out sabotage on Tuesday as a cause of a blaze that killed at least 67 inmates at the biggest prison in Saudi Arabia, where the war against Islamist extremists linked to al-Qaeda is raging. A massive security cordon around the prison resulted in a major traffic jam.
OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia has taken a major step down the road to economic liberalisation with government approval to set up a real stock market and end the state monopoly over the domestic aviation sector, economists said on Tuesday.
Arab economies stand to suffer around -billion in direct losses during the remainder of the current year if the United States wages war on Iraq, a leading Saudi economist said on Monday.
The United States is applying double standards, banning Iraq and other Arab countries from acquiring weapons of mass destruction while allowing Israel to possess them, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef has said.