SAUDI ARABIA: Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah said yesterday that, while Riyadh remains a loyal friend of the US, the kingdom cannot defend Washington's policy on the Arab-Israeli conflict.
In an interview published in the Washington Post and the New York Times, the effective ruler of the kingdom said he had spoken out forcefully about the Palestinian question from a personal sense of justice, history and humanity.
"Here you have [the Israeli] army equipped with planes and tanks and helicopters confronting \ equipped with rocks . . . We see children being shot at, buildings being destroyed, trees uprooted, people encircled, territories closed and women killed, babies delivered at checkpoints."
The US, "the most powerful country in the world, must reject oppression. It must reject humiliation . . . which leads people to become suicide bombers."
The crown prince observed that the 15 Saudis involved in the September 11th attacks on the US had been brainwashed by the Saudi dissident who mastermined the operation; Osama bin Laden's objective was to "drive a wedge between the kingdom and the United States". But "there has been no change" in the relationship between Saudi Arabia and the US, he asserted.
At the weekend, the crown prince warned the US, in an interview with the Saudi-owned al-Hayat daily published in London, that its support for Israel jeopardised its interests in the region.
And he said: "The kingdom will exert every effort to support the Palestinians and to halt the aggression against them."
