This is the second of two parts of an interview conducted with Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi Arabian Ambassador to the United States. Prince Turki spoke with SUSRIS from his office in Washington, DC on March 2, 2006.

Part one of this interview appeared in SUSRIS on Thursday, March 9, 2006.   Click here to access that item.

Prince Turki al-Faisal
Saudi Arabia's Ambassador to the United States
Washington, DC, March 2, 2006
Part 2

SUSRIS: Let�s talk about the relationship in the war on terror. Most accounts have been positive about cooperation and coordination. However, in January the Los Angeles Times ran a story critical of the Kingdom�s efforts. It said Saudi Arabia had done well in fighting terrorism inside its borders but needed to do more in the global war on terror. What was your reaction? 

Prince Turki: Well I thought that was reflective of several things. First of all it was reflective of ignorance on what Saudi Arabia and the United States have been doing together. Secondly it was, the way it was framed, it seemed to have an intention of attempting to affect a very positive step that was taking place at the time. The article came, I think, two days before Vice President Cheney arrived in Saudi Arabia. The reporter quoted from statements that had been made a year or year and a half earlier. And it selectively quoted from a Treasury Department official�s comments. The Vice President was coming to Saudi Arabia. If the United States government had any questions or concerns about Saudi Arabia�s role, its efforts and cooperation he should have discussed that with the King directly. Why would a government official put it in an article before the Vice President comes? So it gave the impression that it was an attempt by somebody, we don�t know who, to put some kind of a wedge between us before the Mr. Cheney came to the Kingdom. Of course, it didn�t succeed. The Vice President had a very good visit with the King and things moved on from there. 

But the media of course, is.. ..another of the briefs I have here, along with the Congress and the American people, is to engage with the media and to tell them the embassy is at their service. They don�t need to depend on so-called anonymous sources or unmentioned government officials. If they want they can come down directly to me and get the information. We will tell it to them on the record. We have no problem with that. 

SUSRIS: So, how would you characterize the coordination and cooperation in the war on terror?

Prince Turki: The relationship is very good. And it is not only a result of September 11. I was Director of Intelligence in Saudi Arabia for 24 years, and the five years before that I worked in the intelligence field as a liaison with foreign intelligence services including the CIA. So from the very first day I took up my post in 1973 I was dealing with US intelligence departments on the exchange of information. 

In those days, as I mentioned earlier, there was the Cold War on Communism and Marxist ideology. You know all of the negative affects of Cold War era. The Kingdom at that time was targeted by Communists and Marxists and others as a target of terrorism. In the 60�s Saudi embassies were attacked and their diplomats were kidnapped. There was an attack on our embassy in Sudan where the American ambassador was murdered by Marxists terrorists. 

So the issue of terrorism with us is a long lived one and not a newly experienced one as some would have you believe, particularly in the West. And all of those years since 1973 when I first started working, until 2001 when I left my job in the intelligence field the cooperation with the United States was the ultimate -- in the exchange of information, training, joint operations, you name it.

The first tide of terrorist attacks was against Saudi Arabia in 1995. Two years later a group of al-Qaeda operatives were trying to smuggle arms into the Kingdom from across the border and they were captured. That led to us and the United States to exchange more information. Bin Laden had by then begun his propaganda campaign, primarily against the Kingdom. He included the United States in his demand for the withdrawal of what he called crusader troops from the Holy Land. 

Prince Sultan, the present Crown Prince, was the defense minister when he met on a visit with President Clinton. He proposed to the president that a joint committee be set up between our intelligence services to pursue terrorism in general, but more importantly al-Qaeda and Bin Laden in particular. George Tenet was then director of the CIA and I was still Director of the Intelligence services in Saudi Arabia. We headed this joint effort of American and Saudi intelligence officials from all the intelligence communities, not just the CIA and the Saudi General Intelligence Department. We met regularly, not at my level, or George�s level, but at technician�s levels to exchange information from the day that it was formed until I left. I am sure it is still standing. Another committee that was established, this was after September 11th, has American officials sitting with Saudi officials in our financial sector. They are pursuing what is termed the money trail for terrorist activity to make sure that none of it out of Saudi Arabia. So all these efforts are ongoing and in place. 

SUSRIS: Can you talk about the specific areas of cooperation between Saudi Arabia and the United States during the Cold War? The business of intelligence is by necessity secretive but it may help many Americans appreciate the relationship if they knew more about Saudi Arabia�s support of the United States in those years.

Prince Turki: Now it is history. There is no more Soviet Union or the Cold War so one can talk more freely about it now than before without compromising either ones� conscience or ones� national interests. Two incidents I will describe to you. The first involves the purchase of Soviet weapons so that Americans and we can discover their technology and so on. And through various second and third hand business entities we bought Warsaw Pact tanks that ended up coming to Saudi Arabia and from there went to the US to be inspected and studied and so on. 

That was just a very small portion of what we did cooperatively with you. Another example, of more strategic and geopolitical significance was during the time when the United States was going through the post Watergate assault on your intelligence services by your Congress. There was the Church committee and so forth. By about 1975 I think there was almost a directive from your Congress that there should be no more intelligence work done outside the US until you had reviewed everything. It ended up having that affect anyway -- the laws that were passed and the regulatory criteria that your Congress put on the intelligence community. 

At that time the Soviet Union was expanding into post-colonial Africa. For example, from Portugal there were Mozambique, Angola and various other areas that were just becoming decolonized. They were becoming Marxist regimes. The year before that, in 1974, Ethiopia had gone Marxist. Somalia was still in between, it was still a Marxist regime but they were jealous of the Soviet interests in Ethiopia. Ziad Barre at the time was beginning to try and wean himself away and made a deal with the American government to do something in Berbera which had almost become a Soviet base at that time. 

The French actually came up with the proposition, at that time the Director of Intelligence in France was a man called Comte Alexandre de Marenches. This was during Giscard D�Estaing�s presidency. It was the end of 1974 and Watergate had already taken its toll. I think that President Nixon left office by that time. There was great turmoil and Comte de Marenches made a visit to four countries in our area. He visited the Shah of Iran, he came to visit King Faisal before he died, he went to visit President Sadat and he then went on to visit with King Hassan of Morocco. 

His proposition was that our American friends were in trouble, their intelligence collection and capability has been diminished to say the least and literally they didn�t have any more money left to do anything. So we, as friends of the United States, we should get together and try to do something to face the Communist threat on our doorstep in Africa. All the way from the Red Sea, in East Africa to the Atlantic Ocean there was a belt of countries that were turning Communist or sympathizing with the Soviet Union and so on. So the leaders from these four countries agreed to set up what was then called the Safari Club. This was the code name for it. The Safari Club included these four countries, Iran, Egypt, Morocco, Saudi Arabia plus France. 

We actually engaged in countering Soviet expansion in all of these areas. Whether by money, by human resources, by intelligence work -- all kinds of skullduggery you can think of in the intelligence field was used. We were successful in some areas. If you remember in the late 1970�s there was an attempt to attack the Congo from Angola with Cuban troops that had been brought by the Soviet Union to support Angolan troops. They were trying to separate the rich province of Shaba in the Congo from the rest of the Congo. The Safari Club provided the military wherewithal, the money and the intelligence to successfully counter that effort. It also initiated the support for the late Jonas Savimbi in his fight for Angola against the Communist regime in those days by giving him financial aid, intelligence, training and things like that. In Mozambique there were also efforts made. Djibouti was becoming independent at the time and there was a threat to it from Ethiopia which is a next door neighbor. So support was given to Djibouti to become more stable. And so on and so on, this was a very important group of countries that got together in support of the United States which was incapable at the time. We were able to fill the vacuum and provide some kind of assurance even to the African countries who were scared of the Communist threat but couldn�t rely on the United States at the time. All of us informed the United States that this was our activity and that we were going to do it. I think they expressed gratitude at the time and that�s how things worked. The ultimate example of Saudi-US cooperation was Afghanistan. It is well documented. I don�t have to go into detail.

SUSRIS: Can we bring it up to a more current time period? There has been precious little disclosure and reporting of Saudi Arabia�s support to the United States during Operation Iraqi Freedom. But what there has been in the press, especially an article by AP�s John Solomon in 2004, suggests that Saudi Arabia, despite having misgivings about the wisdom of invading Iraq, was instrumental in the success of the military operation � including such measures as overflight and refueling, prepositioning of special forces, command and control support and more discreet measures. Can you comment on this area in as much as you are able to provide some level of understanding?

Prince Turki: What I can tell you is when the United States came to us and asked for help in providing overflight and other facilities. At that time we agreed, despite the fact that we said we were against the American invasion and that we thought the consequences would not be as predicted or envisioned by some of the experts of the Pentagon. Because of our friendship with the United States we agreed to do certain things. 

But I think what was more important was that when Saddam Hussein fell Saudi Arabia was one of the first countries to move in and try to help the Iraqi people with humanitarian aid and medical aid. This was before there were any issues of a government in place or anything like that. Saudi support went to all parts of Iraq -- from Basra to Kirkuk and Mosul and the Kurdish parts of Iraq. In Baghdad we set up a field hospital when everything had broken down especially in the health services. This was a military field hospital, which treated something like 2000 Iraqis a day until the situation became untenable because of the lawlessness. Then we had to withdraw our people from there. So we were very much engaged in trying to help the Iraqi people.

SUSRIS: Can you talk about Iraq and how the United States and Saudi Arabia will deal with the situation there?

Prince Turki: Well I think all of us have agreed to help, not just Saudi Arabia and the United States, but equally important the contiguous countries which at the instigation of Saudi Arabia two years ago started meeting. When Iraq had formed a government it was invited to participate. These were Saudi Arabia, Iran, Kuwait, Turkey, Syria Jordan but it also included Egypt and Bahrain. And so these contiguous counties have been meeting periodically to see how we can be of help to the Iraqi government. 

More recently, of course, the Kingdom has been very active and encouraging in developing the political process in Iraq, in helping all Iraqis, without distinction, to work together and join together. There was a meeting in Cairo in November under the auspices of the Arab League for all the Iraqi factions. It had the encouragement of Saudi Arabia. After that, because of our contacts, and other countries� contacts, the last elections that were held, the parliamentary elections held in December the Sunnis were engaged more and more. You can truly say that those elections are legitimate and have provided for a sovereign representative body that the Iraqi people can turn to and say this is our parliament. We have all agreed, the contiguous countries in our talks with the United States and other countries involved in the issue, Britain and so on, that it is up to the Iraqi people to decide their future, that we should not interfere inside Iraq and that if someone does we should point it out and tell them not to do it. 

If it is a question of withdrawal of American troops or British troops or whatever it is, that is the decision of the Iraqi people to take, not for anybody else to do that. This is what is happening and I think perhaps there is a silver lining in what happened in Samarra and the subsequent bloodbaths that occurred in various places, including the attacks on Sunni mosques and so on. All the political leadership in Iraq now is engaged in forming a government of national unity and are willing to compromise, something they were not willing to do before this bloodbath. 

SUSRIS: They have stared into the abyss and are stepping back?

Prince Turki: They have. Absolutely. So this is where Saudi Arabia is going with regard to Iraq.

SUSRIS: What is Saudi Arabia�s view of developments in the Palestinian Authority, the parliamentary victory of Hamas?

Prince Turki: On Palestine and Hamas, the Kingdom�s position is that we have called on all Palestinians to adhere to the Arab League peace plan and the roadmap. If you look at the press reporting of the GCC foreign ministers meeting in Riyadh that took place yesterday you will see a reference to that. We are going to continue to give support to the Palestinian people through the various international bodies, whether it is the United Nations, the IMF, the World Bank or whatever, and we think the Palestinian Authority is committed to the Abdullah peace plan and the roadmap. And that is how the Palestinians should move forward. 

SUSRIS: So funding for the Palestinian Authority would go through third parties, not to Hamas?

Prince Turki: We have never given direct funding to Hamas, nor have we given direct funding to Fatah. It has all gone through international bodies including the Arab league of course, 

SUSRIS: In the same way as the EU?

Prince Turki:  That�s right, and in the same way the United States has been dealing with the Palestinian Authority. 

SUSRIS: Thank you, Prince Turki, for taking time to share your views on these important issues with our readers.

Prince Turki: You are welcome. Please come back. 

• Issues of the Day: Saudi Ambassador to the US On Sunday Talk Show - SUSRIS IOI - Feb. 6, 2006

• Community and Cooperation - Prince Turki Al-Faisal - SUSRIS IOI - December 2, 2005

• The Global Scourge of Terrorism: Ambassador Prince Turki al Faisal Shares His Outlook - SUSRIS Item of Interest - Nov. 8, 2005

• Prince Turki Al-Faisal's Views on Terrorist Attacks and Bin Laden - SUSRIS IOI - Dec. 7, 2004

• Prince Turki al-Faisal Talks With Charlie Rose - The Charlie Rose Show - PBS - February 13, 2006

  • Part 1 - Relations, Oil

  • Part 2 - Iraq, Iran, War on Terror

  • Part 3 - Middle East Peace

About Prince Turki al Faisal

• Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia Bio

• BBC Profile

• Global Security.org