This SUSRIS Special Report provides an
article by Hassan M. Fattah, writing for the New York Times,
which provides a wrap up of the weekend's meeting between
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and King Abdullah. Related
materials with links are provided below.
Saudi-Iran Meeting Yields Little Substance
By HASSAN M. FATTAH (New York Times)
RIYADH,
Saudi Arabia, March 4 — President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad of Iran
and King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia concluded an extraordinary
meeting early Sunday promising a thaw in relations between the
two regional powers. But they stopped short of agreeing on any
concrete plans to tackle the escalating sectarian and political
crises throughout the Middle East.
Mr. Ahmadinejad said that the two countries had agreed to try to
curb tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims and that they had
discussed in detail issues related to the Palestinians and Iraq.
The leaders are believed to have focused on finding ways to end
the political standoff in Lebanon between Hezbollah, backed by
Iran, and the government of Fouad Siniora, which is supported by
the United States.
Mr. Ahmadinejad’s first official visit to Saudi Arabia, which
began Saturday, was marked by decidedly public shows of warmth
and friendship between the leaders, as the men embraced, at
times held hands in an Arab sign of close friendship, and smiled
to cameras. The event marked the culmination of months of
diplomatic efforts between senior Saudi and Iranian officials to
ease the political standoff in Lebanon, cool sectarian violence
in Iraq and possibly avert a looming Iranian confrontation with
the United States.
Analysts
were divided on Sunday over the ultimate impact of the summit
meeting, held at the behest of the Iranian president.
To some, it promised to break the spiraling cycle of
brinkmanship in the region, focusing both countries on
constructive solutions to their differences.
Skeptics, however, said the absence of any tangible resolutions
or initiatives, coupled with Mr. Ahmadinejad’s continuing
aggressive speech, suggested that the meeting was more a public
relations offensive meant to help Iran improve its image at home
and in the Arab world as its confrontation with the United
States appears to be escalating.
On Saturday, diplomats from Germany and the five permanent
members of the United Nations Security Council discussed trying
to impose tougher sanctions on Iran for its continued uranium
enrichment efforts in defiance of the Security Council. The
diplomats, speaking in a conference call, ended their discussion
without an agreement.
But after Mr. Ahmadinejad landed in Tehran on Sunday, he
repeated earlier warnings of a “conspiracy” to divide the Muslim
world. This time, he included Saudi Arabia as one of his
partners in resisting the plan.
“Both Iran and Saudi Arabia are aware of the enemies’
conspiracies,” Mr. Ahmadinejad told reporters. “We decided to
take measures to confront such plots, and hopefully this will
strengthen Muslim countries against oppressive pressures by the
imperialist front.”
Saudi officials had no comment about that. But there was
conflict over another issue. The Saudi Press Agency reported
that Mr. Ahmadinejad had expressed support for a Saudi-led
land-for-peace initiative that would have Arab states recognize
Israel in return for the establishment of a Palestinian state in
the lands occupied by Israel in 1967. Arab foreign ministers
meeting in Cairo on Sunday agreed to revive the plan ahead of
the Arab League summit meeting in Riyadh later this month.
An Iranian official, speaking to Iran’s state-run media,
reportedly denied that the initiative was discussed during the
summit meeting.
State Department officials on Sunday had no immediate comment on
the meeting. But Sean McCormack, the State Department spokesman,
said Friday, before the talks, that “it’s going to be up to the
Saudi leadership to decide how they interact with the Iranian
president.”
Mr. McCormack said, “We would hope that they send a message to
the Iranian president that across a wide spectrum the Iranian
behavior in the region and around the world is just
unacceptable, whether it’s their support for terrorism or their
pursuit for weapons of mass destruction or their efforts to
block any sort of progress in building a democracy in Lebanon or
in the Palestinian areas. We would hope that the message to the
Iranian leadership is that they need to change their behavior.”
A Saudi analyst with close ties to the government said, “In the
end, they both know this is a geopolitical struggle,” adding,
“They can offer big words about ending sectarian strife, but
what can they really do about it? Ahmadinejad simply undertook
this visit to make himself look cooperative with other Persian
Gulf states.”
Mr. Ahmadinejad has come under increased pressure in recent
weeks to tone down his comments. In Tehran on Saturday, Akbar
Alami, a member of Parliament, said members intended to ask him
to appear before them to answer questions about his policies.
Mr. Alami said the lawmakers wanted to question his “provocative
speeches, positions that are against diplomatic norms and
against the country’s national interests,” the ISNA student news
agency reported.
Sunni-Muslim Saudi Arabia and Shiite Iran have vied for regional
dominance, each carrying the banner of Islam and seeing itself
as defending its majority sect. At the same time, the region’s
calculus has changed significantly with the American invasion of
Iraq and the fall of Saddam Hussein.
Saudi Arabia in recent months has led an aggressive diplomatic
effort to counterbalance Iran’s growing influence in the region,
most recently serving as a host for the major Palestinian
factions at a meeting in which they said they had agreed to form
a unity government.
Saudi Arabia is also said to be working to bring Lebanese
parties together to arrive at a peaceful settlement of the
three-month crisis. An important part of the discussion on
Saturday, some analysts said, was how to bring Syria back into
the Arab fold after two years of isolation.
For much of the 1980s, Saudi Arabia and Iran had an adversarial
relationship. Their relations thawed with the election of a
reformist president in Iran, Mohammad Khatami, in 1997. But
relations have cooled significantly since the election of Mr.
Ahmadinejad in 2005.
The meeting on Saturday, though initiated by Iran, was an
example of Saudi Arabia’s muscle-flexing in the region.
“Saudi Arabia did what people have been asking the U.S. to do
for so long, which is to extend a hand out to the Iranians,”
said Abdel Monem Said Aly, director of Al-Ahram Center for
Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo. “The Saudis seized on
the right time to give the Iranians a window of opportunity to
get out of their mess.”
Mr. Aly said the test of a détente between Saudi Arabia and Iran
is yet to come. “Will the Iranians be willing to give the Saudis
what they didn’t give the Europeans, which is to stop their
nuclear activity?” he said. “That will be a litmus test.”
Reporting was contributed by Nazila Fathi from Tehran; Nada
Bakri from Beirut, Lebanon; Thom Shanker from Washington; and
Rasheed Abou-Alsamh from Jidda, Saudi Arabia.
From The New York Times on the Web (c) The New York Times
Company. Reprinted with Permission.
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