Bush ignored warnings on Iraq: Saudi prince
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister says the Bush administration did not heed Saudi warnings about occupying Iraq, and he does not believe a new constitution and elections will solve the emerging nation’s problems.
Prince Saud al-Faisal also said his country was not ready for a peace treaty and diplomatic relations with Israel, adding that Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon had taken conflicting actions which were hindering peace.
“He does something and then immediately goes to the United Nations and makes a speech saying: ‘I am not going to do this, I am not going to do that’,” Prince Saud said.
“We are not establishing relations just for the heck of it,” he added. “It would be false, because we are in a state of conflict.”
In a wide-ranging interview with the Associated Press, Prince Saud said he would like to see oil prices drop about $20 a barrel from its current $60-plus range, but predicted a lack of refineries would keep consumer prices higher even if crude should become cheaper.
On Iraq, the foreign minister expressed scepticism at Bush administration officials’ predictions that coming political events in Iraq would heal the country’s divisions.
“Perhaps what they are saying is going to happen,” he said. “I wish it would happen, but I don’t think that a constitution by itself will resolve the issues, or an election by itself will solve the difficult problems.”
US policies in Iraq risk dividing the country into three separate parts: Kurdish, Sunni Arab and Shiite Arab, he cautioned.
“We have not seen a move inside Iraq that would satisfy us that the national unity of Iraq, and therefore the territorial unity of Iraq, will be assured,” he said.
He also said the Saudis were sceptical of the outcome before the US went to war in Iraq, but its concerns were not always heeded.
“It is frustrating to see something that is clearly going to happen, and you are not listened to by a friend, and soon harm comes out of it,” Saud said. “It hurts.”
The foreign minister said his kingdom was not ready to send an ambassador to Baghdad because the diplomat would become an immediate target for assassination.
“I doubt that he’d last a day,” Prince Saud said.
Saud also made clear the kingdom’s offer to Israel of peace with all Arab countries if it relinquished all the land the Arabs lost in the 1967 war remains on the table.
By withdrawing Israeli troops and settlers from Gaza, Prince Saud said, Sharon seemed willing to turn from being “a general who wants to conquer territory” to making peace.
Instead, the prince said, Sharon was making demands of the Palestinian Authority that he knew could not be met.
“The Palestinian Authority has been decimated by Mr Sharon himself; they are weak because of what he did to them, and now he is insisting they disarm Hamas and (Islamic) Jihad,” Prince Saud said.
Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas does not have the troops to do it, he went on.
Ministers from nearly a dozen Arab and Muslim countries, including Qatar, Turkey, Morocco and Tunisia, have met Israeli Foreign Minister Silvan Shalom, but Prince Saud said his government would not follow their lead.
“We have not signed a peace treaty. How can you establish relations? How is that conceivable? How can it be trusted?” he said.
With oil prices rising amid disruption of Gulf Coast crude oil production and refining due to the Katrina and Rita hurricanes, Prince Saud rejected suggestions of an oil shortage and said prices should drop to $40-45 a barrel from over $65.
“The oil industry does not suffer from a lack of oil,” Saud said.
He cited a lack of refineries in the US and elsewhere and said Saudi Arabia had sought to help build a US refinery but had no takers.
“We are adding barrels of oil on the market,” Prince Saud said. “The price of oil will go down.”
He predicted prices would decline significantly by next summer.
