Islamic Mastermind=Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah

[Guest guest]

DEBKAfile Political Analysis

 

"Saudi Arabia's virtual ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz

stood against the US campaign against Afghanistan's Taliban

regime, which Riyadh supported, and denied US forces the use of the

Prince Sultan air base east of Riyadh. He covertly financed the air

corridor that lifted al Qaeda survivors of the Afghan war, many of

them Saudi nationals, to safety in the Persian Gulf and Middle East

regions, including south Lebanon. Through his intelligence agencies

and Muslim charities, the crown prince put up Saudi funds for the

Iranian arms cargo, loaded aboard the Karine-A smuggling freighter

later intercepted by Israeli on the Red Sea, before it could reach

its Palestinian destination.

Abdullah is the first Arab ruler to confront president Bush's "axis

of evil" with a tripartite pact made up of Saudi Arabia and two

elements of that axis – Iraq and Iran – with whom he is synchronizing

certain of his political, military and economic strategies.

And finally, Abdullah never stop funneling oil funds to the

Palestinian Islamic extremist Hamas listed by the State Department as

a terrorist organization. These moneys support Hamas's impressive

arsenal and reservoir of suicide killers."

 

Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah "Idea" Goes into Surprising Orbit

 

25 February: Probably no one was more surprised than Saudi Arabia's

virtual ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz, by the furor –

including Israel president Moshe Katsav's offer to fly to Riyadh –

raised by a single sentence he uttered in an interview to the New

York Times columnist Thomas L, Friedman, after it was published

February 18:

"…this is exactly the idea I had in mind – full withdrawal from all

the occupied territories, in accordance with UN resolutions,

including in Jerusalem, for full normalization of relations. I have

drafted a speech along those lines [for the Arab League summit

meeting in Beirut on March 28]."

The Saudi ruler did not pronounce the word peace, mention a halt in

the terror and violence in return for a full Israeli withdrawal to

the 1967 borders, or expand on his "idea" in any organized follow-up

in a non-media forum. Given those omissions, Abdullah certainly did

not see himself as having put forward a formal peace initiative. What

he was after, according to DEBKAfile's Middle East sources, was a

brush to give his image in America and Washington a badly needed

shine and offset his murky post September 19 record. He selected one

of his harshest critics in the US media.

Abdullah knows quite well that he has come out of the first stage of

the Bush administration's war on terror as its leading opponent. His

credentials as an American ally began dipping in the 1990s, when he

effectively blocked off every bid by US investigators to explore al

Qaeda's workings and supporters in the kingdom. Then, when most of

the suicides who struck the WorldTradeCenter in New York and the

Pentagon in Washington proved to be Saudi citizens, Abdullah kept

this fact out of the domestic press and tried to gloss it over.

 

Four days after the Friedman article appeared, he New York Times ran

a follow-up by Henry Siegman, a senior fellow at the Council on

Foreign Relations, who quoted Saudi officials as saying that

…"normalization of relations with Israel does not preclude Israeli

sovereignty over the Western Wall in the Old City and over Jewish

neighborhoods in East Jerusalem."

Those same sources also indicated that Saudi Arabia would not object

to the transfer of small areas of the West to Israeli in return

for "qualitatively and quantitatively comparable territory to be

transferred by Israel to the Palestinians." The proviso was

that "such an exchange be the result of a freely negotiated

compromise."

At this point, administration officials decided to find out if

Abdullah was in earnest or just working up a positive spin. William

Burns, assistant secretary of state for the Near East, went to Riyadh

to investigate, after which, on Sunday, February 24, secretary of

state Colin Powell telephoned the Crown Prince. Nothing was published

after either conversation.

DEBKAfile's Washington and Middle East sources report that the

impression they gained was unclear. The prince did not back away from

his statement to Friedman, but on the other hand he said he was not

sure he would present it to the Arab summit. Asked to endorse

the "Saudi officials'" additions to Siegman, he denied knowing

anything about them.

Turning his back on the episode, Powell therefore went back to

stressing that the first essential step in the Middle East conflict

must be a halt in the violence, before any political steps could be

broached. The Abdullah statement was thus relegated to a non-

operative sideline.

Powell must also have been aware of the thumbs down coming from the

Palestinian mainstream group. The central committee of Arafat's Fatah

movement called Abdullah's initiative a new stab in the back for "the

Palestinian struggle and its legitimate rights". The statement it

issued asks the Saudis if they were willing to bargain and give up

their own rights in border disputes with brotherly Arab states. Why

then do they propose initiatives for giving up "territories occupied

since 1948, so serving Zionist and American schemes" and ignoring the

right of return of expelled Palestinian refugees.

Arafat's Fatah accuses the Saudis of trying to deflect American

threats from certain Arab states, including Saudi Arabia, at the

expense of the Palestinian people.

Summing up, the Americans do not take the Abdullah "initiative'

seriously; the Palestinians are dead against it, and even the crown

prince himself did not meant it for real. In any case, the Saudis are

far from being out of the woods in Washington. Monday, February 25,

the Washington Times quoted US intelligence officials as reporting

that computers seized last year by NATO troops from Saudi aid

organizations in Sarajevo showed photos of past terrorist targets and

a Washington street map pinpointing government buildings.

Yet in Jerusalem the Abdullah throwaway phrase has been seized on as

a bright ray of hope. Israeli president Katsav has invited himself to

Riyadh, foreign minister Shimon Peres is off to Paris to discuss

the "exciting new development" with President Jacques Chirac

and his colleagues in Labor and opposition suggest Abdullah's non-

peace plan provides a reason for freeing Arafat from his continued

confinement in Ramallah.

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