For the second time in the last few months, former president George Bush has intervened in a critical foreign policy area, calling Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz of Saudi Arabia to reassure him that the current president's "heart" is in the right place when it comes to the Middle East, a senior administration official and a diplomat from the region told the New York Times.
The sources said that the former president telephoned the crown prince, who has complained that the current Bush administration is too close to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, before US Secretary of State Colin Powell was dispatched to the Middle East by the White House late last month, the officials said.
The point of the call was to vouch for his son and to convince the crown prince, who is the day-to-day ruler of Saudi Arabia, that some strains in the United States' relations with Saudi Arabia over the Israeli-Palestinian conflict did not represent a permanent breach.
Former president Bush also urged Prince Abdullah to visit the United States, an invitation that had been offered earlier by the White House but sidestepped by the Saudi leader, the diplomat said. The crown prince deferred again, according to the accounts.
According to the paper, the former president made his call to the crown prince at a newly sensitive moment in relations between the kingdom and Washington.
Abdullah has been unusually blunt in his criticism of the new administration's handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. In particular, he has said that the administration should show more understanding of the Palestinian position and be more outspoken against actions by the Sharon government.
According to one of the accounts, President Bush was in the room when his father made the call.
The former president's close interest in his son's management of foreign policy comes as the new president, a novice in the field, has dealt with a series of difficult decisions early in his presidency.
The chief of staff of former President Bush, Jean Becker, was quoted as sayingy that Bush was "not comfortable" commenting on his phone calls. But, she added, it was "not unusual for him to keep in touch with his friends since he left office."
And officials at the current White House, who have made it a habit to decline to make statements on the relationship between father and son, did not return a telephone call asking for comment when contacted by the NY Times.
Relations between Saudi Arabia and the United States were at a high during the first Bush presidency, when the elder Bush successfully led the Gulf War against Iraq, largely from bases in Saudi Arabia.
But, the report continues, recent friction between the Saudi military and American soldiers at the Prince Sultan base in Saudi Arabia have led some senior Pentagon officials to believe that the crown prince's discontent over the administration's Middle East policy had spilled over.
The Saudis have said they will not extradite 11 suspects they hold, who are wanted by the United States in the 1996 truck bombing that killed 19 American servicemen, according to the Times.
In the last few months, the Saudis have placed restrictions on the kinds and amounts of ordnance that the Americans can bring into the base, Pentagon officials said. These difficulties are being worked out at senior levels of the two militaries, the officials told the daily.
At the end of his recent trip to Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories, Secretary Powell stopped in Paris to meet with Abdullah. According to American and Middle East accounts of the meeting, the crown prince was frank in describing what he sees as the one-sided attitude of the administration in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but presented his criticisms in a "we are friends" manner – Albawaba.com
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
