FROM THE 'SAUDI-US RELATIONS'
PHOTO ALBUM  |
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Crown Prince Abdullah visiting
President George W. Bush in Crawford, Texas on April 25, 2002
Click
for the Photo Library
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WHAT'S NEW
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>
Saudi-US Relations Information Service (SUSRIS) Launched
Visit the web site for more information on the SUSRIS
features. [more]
> New
Saudi-American Forum Essays/Items of Interest:
"US-Saudi
Ties Prove Crucial in War," by Michael Dobbs
"The
Prince," by Elsa Walsh
"Baer's 'Fall of the House of Saud' and the Stakeholders
in the Saudi-American Relationship," by Kevin Taecker
"Wahhabism: A Christmas Eve Talk," by Abdalla Musa
Tayer Mohammed
"Myths
and Realities About Unemployment in Saudi Arabia,"
by Kevin Taecker
"Saudi
Arabs, Americans and Oil,"
by Robert L. Norberg
"The
Role of the Extended Family in Saudi Arabia," by David E.
Long
[more]
> Saudi-US
Relations Information Service (SUSRIS) Current
Discussion Topics
o US-Saudi
Relations...
o Defense
and Security...
o Business
and Economics...
o Regional
Peace Issues...
o Energy
and Resources...
[more]
Click to visit... then sign in as a New
User to join the dialogue.
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SUSRIS is an
Amazon Associate. Linking from here to the Amazon
site when making purchases helps support this effort.
Thanks !
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WHAT
IS THE SAUDI-U.S. RELATIONS INFORMATION SERVICE?
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We are pleased to welcome you to the Saudi-US Relations
Information Service (SUSRIS).
This newly founded service provides you information
resources and interactive features through a web site and
weekly newsletter -- all designed to enhance your
understanding of the historic relationship between the
United States and Saudi Arabia.
The Saudi-US Relations Information Service is a public
service of the National Council on U.S.-Arab Relations as an
element of its mission to educate Americans about Arab
countries, the Middle East, and the Islamic world.
We invite you to explore the site: signup for the SUSRIS
newsletter, join the discussion forum, browse the bookshelf
and photo album, and more. Make the SUSRIS your home page or
add it to your Favorites List. Check back from time to time
to see what we've added -- what you see today is just the
beginning.
For more information about the service please visit the
website at: http://www.SaudiUSRelations.org
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| HAVE
YOU READ? |
U.S.-SAUDI
TIES PROVE CRUCIAL IN WAR
by
Michael Dobbs
(Originally
published in The Washington Post,
April 27, 2003) |
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"...the Myers trip marked the start of five
months of intensive military cooperation between
Washington and Riyadh that played a crucial role in
the U.S. victory over Saddam Hussein. According to
sources close to the negotiations, Saudi Arabia
ended up agreeing to virtually every request made by
the Bush administration for military or logistical
assistance.
"In addition to allowing the United States
to run the air war against Iraq out of a Saudi air
base, the Saudi government provided U.S. Special
Operations forces secret staging grounds into
western Iraq and granted overflight rights to U.S.
planes and missiles, officials said. Saudi Arabia
also tapped into its vast oil reserves to help
restore stability to the oil market at a time when
prices had hit their highest levels in more than a
decade, oil industry sources said.
"Taking place against a background of
enormous public unease in both countries over
U.S.-Saudi relations, the cooperation over Iraq
suggests that the controversial alliance between
Washington and the Saudi royal family is stronger
than often portrayed, and will survive the aftermath
of the U.S. military ouster of the Iraqi
government..."
[more]
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THE
PRINCE
by
Elsa Walsh
[Originally published in The
New Yorker, March 24, 2003]
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How the Saudi Ambassador became Washington's
indispensable operator.
During the first weeks of the second Bush
Administration, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the
United States, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, met with
the new President. Bandar, who is fifty-three and
has been the Saudi Ambassador for twenty years, was
accustomed to an unusually personal relationship
with the White House; he was so close to the
President's father, George H. W. Bush, that he was
considered almost a member of the family. The Saudi
Ambassador had been happy about the younger Bush's
victory, but he was worn out by the unpublicized
role he had played in the failed negotiations to
resolve the Middle East crisis during the last weeks
of the Clinton Presidency...
[more]
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| AN
ESSAY FROM THE SAUDI-AMERICAN
FORUM |
BAER'S
"FALL OF THE HOUSE OF SAUD" AND
THE STAKEHOLDERS IN THE SAUDI-AMERICAN
RELATIONSHIP
by
Kevin R. Taecker
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| From Kevin Taecker:
A Personal Note to Fellow Stakeholders:
In 1989, it was my responsibility as the U.S.
Treasury Department Financial Attach� to the
Arabian Peninsula Region under Ambassador Walter
Cutler at the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh to convey
to the Saudi Arabian Monetary Agency the United
States government's sincere wishes that Saudi
Arabia should participate in the first
international regime to combat money laundering,
then directed by the Basel Committee on Banking
Supervision. Saudi Arabia accepted that
proposal, and ever since has actively supported
the global efforts to combat illegal and
dangerous abuses of its own local Saudi, the GCC-regional,
and the global financial and capital markets.
This commitment was reconfirmed - with
distinction, I am told -- in the days following
September 11, 2001 when Saudi Arabia helped to
spearhead the IMF and World Bank's emergency
resolutions aimed at depriving terrorists of the
use of the international financial system and
using the system to catch them. If the other
countries of the Mid-Eastern and other emerging
market regions were doing as much to combat
money laundering as Saudi Arabia, the whole
financial side of the long-term global war on
terrorism would be much further along.
Consider, dear stakeholder, how utterly
opposite these memories and observations appear
in relation to the prevailing common wisdom
about Saudi money and its links to terrorism.
For the stakeholders in the Saudi-American
relationship, this is a real and growing
Problem. [more]
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| FACTOID |
| Employment and Saudization
"Greater efforts are needed during the
Seventh Development Plan [2000-2004] to enhance
the private sector's capacity to provide job
opportunities for the steadily growing number of
Saudi new entrants to the labor market,
particularly as their absorption into the
government sector will be difficult.
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| "Notwithstanding
the fact that the private sector provided about
473,500 jobs for Saudis during the Sixth
Development Plan, compared with about 154,700
jobs provided by the government sector, the
number of Saudi nationals still constitutes a
modest percentage of total private sector
employment. Studies prepared by the
Manpower Council indicated that the majority of
foreign labor in the Kingdom work in
establishments employing less than 20 workers.
At the same time, the private establishments'
survey shows that the share of new private
sector jobs taken by Saudis is rising, although
constraints impeding the implementation of
Saudiization must be overcome if this positive
trend is to continue." |
Saudi Arabian Ministry of Planning
Seventh Development Plan
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