[A-List] Washington's Contradictory "Strategy" toward Saudi Arabia

["Yoshie Furuhashi" <critical.montages@xxxxxxxxx>]

The American strategy (if you can call it that) toward Saudi Arabia is
really contradictory, and contradiction has especially become acute
due to the Iraq War. -- Yoshie

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/world/middleeast/27saudi.html>
July 27, 2007
Saudis' Role in Iraq Frustrates U.S. Officials
By HELENE COOPER

This article was reported by Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti and Jim
Rutenberg, and written by Ms. Cooper.

WASHINGTON, July 26 — During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in
January, Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with
documents that seemed to suggest that Iraq's prime minister could not
be trusted.

One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to
lie low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in
part at Mr. Sadr's militia. Another document purported to offer proof
that Mr. Maliki was an agent of Iran.

The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King
Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged.
But, said administration officials who provided an account of the
exchange, the Saudis remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift
between America's most powerful Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its
Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.

Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at
what they say has been Saudi Arabia's counterproductive role in the
Iraq war. They say that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian
agent, the Saudis have offered financial support to Sunni groups in
Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80 foreign fighters who enter Iraq each
month, American military and intelligence officials say that nearly
half are coming from Saudi Arabia and that the Saudis have not done
enough to stem the flow.

One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that
Saudi Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr.
Maliki. He declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni
insurgents because, he said, "That would get into disagreements over
who is an insurgent and who is not."

Senior Bush administration officials said the American concerns would
be raised next week when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and
Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates make a rare joint visit to Jidda,
Saudi Arabia.

Officials in Washington have long resisted blaming Saudi Arabia for
the chaos and sectarian strife in Iraq, choosing instead to pin blame
on Iran and Syria. Even now, military officials rarely talk publicly
about the role of Saudi fighters among the insurgents in Iraq.

The accounts of American concerns came from interviews with several
senior administration officials, who spoke on the condition of
anonymity because they believed that openly criticizing Saudi Arabia
would further alienate the Saudi royal family at a time when the
United States is still trying to enlist Saudi support for Mr. Maliki
and the Iraqi government, and for other American foreign policy goals
in the Middle East, including an Arab-Israeli peace plan.

In agreeing to interviews in advance of the joint trip to Saudi
Arabia, the officials were nevertheless clearly intent on sending a
pointed signal to a top American ally. They expressed deep frustration
that more private American appeals to the Saudis had failed to produce
a change in course.

The American officials said they had no doubt that the documents shown
to Mr. Khalilzad were forgeries, though the Saudis said they had
obtained them from sources in Iraq. "Maliki wouldn't be stupid enough
to put that on a piece of paper," one senior Bush administration
official said. He said Mr. Maliki later assured American officials
that the documents were forgeries.

The Bush administration's frustration with the Saudi government has
increased in recent months because it appears that Saudi Arabia has
stepped up efforts to undermine the Maliki government and to pursue a
different course in Iraq from what the administration has charted.
Saudi Arabia has also stymied a number of other American foreign
policy initiatives, including a hoped-for Saudi embrace of Israel.

Of course, the Saudi government has hardly masked its intention to
prop up Sunni groups in Iraq and has for the past two years explicitly
told senior Bush administration officials of the need to
counterbalance the influence Iran has there. Last fall, King Abdullah
warned 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, American and Arab
diplomats said.

Several officials interviewed for this article said they believed that
Saudi Arabia's direct support to Sunni tribesmen increased this year
as the Saudis lost faith in the Maliki government and felt they must
bolster Sunni groups in the eventuality of a widespread civil war.

Saudi Arabia months ago made a pitch to enlist other Persian Gulf
countries to take a direct role in supporting Sunni tribal groups in
Iraq, said one former American ambassador with close ties to officials
in the Middle East. The former ambassador, Edward W. Gnehm, who has
served in Kuwait and Jordan, said that during a recent trip to the
region he was told that Saudi Arabia had pressed other members of the
Gulf Cooperation Council — which includes Qatar, the United Arab
Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman — to give financial support to
Sunnis in Iraq. The Saudis made this effort last December, Mr. Gnehm
said.

The closest the administration has come to public criticism was an
Op-Ed page article about Iraq in The New York Times last week by Mr.
Khalilzad, now the United States ambassador to the United Nations.
"Several of Iraq's neighbors — not only Syria and Iran but also some
friends of the United States — are pursuing destabilizing policies,"
Mr. Khalilzad wrote. Administration officials said Mr. Khalilzad was
referring specifically to Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates, as well as Mr. Cheney and Stephen J. Hadley,
the national security adviser, have in recent months pressed their
Arab counterparts to do more to encourage Iraq's Sunni leaders to
support Mr. Maliki, senior administration officials said.

"This message certainly has been made very clear in Riyadh and Abu
Dhabi," a senior administration official said. "But there is a deep
reserve directed both at the person of the Maliki government but more
broadly at the concept" that Iraq's Shiites are "surrogates of Iran."
Saudi Arabia has grown increasingly concerned about the rising
influence of Iran in the region.

A spokesman at the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not return
telephone calls on Thursday. But one adviser to the royal family said
that Saudi officials were aware of the American accusations. "As you
know by now, we in Saudi Arabia have been active in having a united
Arab front to, first, avoid further inter-Arab conflict, and at the
same time building consensus to move toward a peace settlement between
the Arabs and Israel," he said. "How others judge our motives is their
problem."

Even as American frustration at Saudi Arabia grows, American military
officials are still cautious about publicly detailing the extent of
the flow of foreign fighters going to Iraq from Saudi Arabia. Earlier
this month, for instance, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the top American
military spokesman in Iraq, detailed the odyssey of a foreign fighter
recently captured in Ramadi.

In his public account, General Bergner told reporters that the man had
arrived in Syria on a chartered bus, was smuggled into Iraq by a
Syrian facilitator, and was given instructions to carry out a suicide
truck bombing on a bridge in Ramadi. He did not identify the man's
nationality, but American officials in Iraq say he was a Saudi.

The American officials in Iraq also say that the majority of suicide
bombers in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and that about 40 percent of all
foreign fighters are Saudi. Officials said that while most of the
foreign fighters came to Iraq to become suicide bombers, others
arrived as bomb makers, snipers, logisticians and financiers.

American military and intelligence officials have been critical of
Saudi efforts to stanch the flow of fighters into Iraq, although they
stress that the Saudi government does not endorse the idea of fighters
from Saudi Arabia going to Iraq.

On the contrary, they said, Saudi Arabia is concerned that these young
men could acquire insurgency training in Iraq and then return home to
carry out attacks in Saudi Arabia — similar to the Saudis who turned
against their homeland after fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.

The Bush administration's relationship with Saudi Arabia has
deteriorated steadily since the United States invasion of Iraq,
culminating in April when, bitingly, King Abdullah, during a speech
before Arab heads of state in Riyadh, condemned the American invasion
of Iraq as "an illegal foreign occupation."

A month before that, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed a
high-profile meeting between Israelis and Palestinians, planned by Ms.
Rice, by brokering a power-sharing agreement between the Palestinian
president, Mahmoud Abbas, and the militant Islamist group Hamas that
did not require Hamas to recognize Israel. While that agreement
eventually fell apart, the Bush administration, on both occasions, was
caught off guard and became infuriated.

But Saudi officials have not been too happy with President Bush,
either, and the plummeting of America's image in the Muslim world has
led King Abdullah to strive to set a more independent course.

The administration "thinks the Saudis are no longer behaving the role
of the good vassal," said Steve Clemons, senior fellow and director of
the American Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The
Saudis, in turn, "see weakness, they see a void, and they're going to
fill the void and call their own shots."

Richard A. Oppel Jr. contributed reporting from Baghdad.

<http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/28/washington/28weapons.html>
July 28, 2007
U.S. Set to Offer Huge Arms Deal to Saudi Arabia
By DAVID S. CLOUD

WASHINGTON, July 27 — The Bush administration is preparing to ask
Congress to approve an arms sale package for Saudi Arabia and its
neighbors that is expected to total $20 billion over the next decade
at a time when some United States officials contend that the Saudis
are playing a counterproductive role in Iraq.

The proposed package of advanced weaponry for Saudi Arabia, which
includes advanced satellite-guided bombs, upgrades to its fighters and
new naval vessels, has made Israel and some of its supporters in
Congress nervous. Senior officials who described the package on Friday
said they believed that the administration had resolved those
concerns, in part by promising Israel $30.4 billion in military aid
over the next decade, a significant increase over what Israel has
received in the past 10 years.

But administration officials remained concerned that the size of the
package and the advanced weaponry it contains, as well as broader
concerns about Saudi Arabia's role in Iraq, could prompt Saudi critics
in Congress to oppose the package when Congress is formally notified
about the deal this fall. In talks about the package, the
administration has not sought specific assurances from Saudi Arabia
that it would be more supportive of the American effort in Iraq as a
condition of receiving the arms package, the officials said.

The officials said the plan to bolster the militaries of Persian Gulf
countries is part of an American strategy to contain the growing power
of Iran in the region and to demonstrate that, no matter what happens
in Iraq, Washington remains committed to its longtime Arab allies in
the region. Officials from the State Department and the Pentagon
agreed to outline the terms of the deal after some details emerged
from closed briefings this week on Capitol Hill.

The officials said Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates, who are to make a joint visit to Saudi
Arabia next week, still intended to use the trip to press the Saudis
to do more to help Iraq's Shiite-dominated government, officials said.

"The role of the Sunni Arab neighbors is to send a positive,
affirmative message to moderates in Iraq in government that the
neighbors are with you," a senior State Department official told
reporters in a conference call on Friday. More specifically, the
official said, the United States wants the Gulf states to make clear
to Sunnis engaged in violence in Iraq that such actions are "killing
your future."

In addition to promising an increase in American military aid to
Israel, the Pentagon is seeking to ease Israel's concerns over the
proposed weapons sales to Saudi Arabia by asking the Saudis to accept
restrictions on the range, size and location of the satellite-guided
bombs, including a commitment not to store the weapons at air bases
close to Israeli territory, the officials said.

The package and the possible steps to allay Israel's concerns were
described to Congress this week, in an effort by the administration to
test the reaction on Capitol Hill before entering into final
negotiations on the package with Saudi officials. The Saudis had
requested that Congress be told about the planned sale, the officials
said, in an effort to avoid the kind of bruising fight on Capitol Hill
that occurred in the 1980s over proposed arms sales to the kingdom.

In his visit with King Abdullah and other Saudi officials next week,
Mr. Gates plans to describe "what the administration is willing to go
forward with" in the arms package and "what we would recommend to the
Hill and others," according to a senior Pentagon official, who
conducted a background briefing on the upcoming trip with reporters on
Friday.

The official added that Mr. Gates would also reassure the Saudis that
"regardless of what happens in the near term in Iraq that our
commitment in the region remains firm, remains steadfast and that, in
fact, we are looking to enhance and develop it."

The $20 billion price tag on the package is more than double what
officials originally estimated when details became public this spring.
Even the higher figure is a rough estimate that could fluctuate
depending on the final package, officials said.

Worried about the impression that the United States was starting an
arms race in the region, State and Defense Department officials
stressed that the arms deal was being proposed largely in response to
improvements in Iran's military capabilities and to counter the threat
posed by its nuclear program, which the Bush administration contends
is aimed at building nuclear weapons.

Along with Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar and the United
Arab Emirates are likely to receive equipment and weaponry from the
arms sales under consideration, officials said. In general, the United
States is interested in upgrading the countries' air and missile
defense systems, improving their navies and making modest improvements
in their air forces, administration officials said, though not all the
packages would be the same.

Ms. Rice is expected to announce Monday that the administration will
open formal discussions with each country about the proposed packages,
in hopes of reaching agreements by the fall. Along with the
announcement of formal talks with Persian Gulf allies on the arms
package, Ms. Rice is planning to outline the new 10-year agreement to
provide military aid to Israel, as well as a similar accord with
Egypt. The $30.4 billion being promised to Israel is $9.1 billion more
than Israel has received over the past decade, an increase of nearly
43 percent.

A senior administration official said the sizable increase was the
result of Israel's need to replace equipment expended in its war
against Hezbollah in Lebanon last summer, as well as to maintain its
advantage in advanced weaponry as other countries in the region
modernize their forces.

In defending the proposed sale to Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states,
the officials noted that the Saudis and several of the other countries
are in talks with suppliers other than the United States. If the
packages offered to them by the United States are blocked or come with
too many conditions, the officials said, the Persian Gulf countries
could turn elsewhere for similar equipment, reducing American
influence in the region.

The United States has made few, if any, sales of satellite-guided
munitions to Arab countries in the past, though Israel has received
them since the mid-1990s as part of a United States policy of ensuring
that Israel has a military edge over its regional rivals.

Israeli officials have made specific requests aimed at eliminating
concerns that satellite-guided bombs sold to the Saudis could be used
against its territory, administration officials said.

Their major concern is not a full-scale Saudi attack, but the
possibility that a rogue pilot armed with one of the bombs could
attack on his own or that the Saudi government could one day be
overthrown and the weapons could fall into the hands of a more radical
regime, officials said.

-- 
Yoshie