US Vice-President Dick Cheney on March 17 concluded his one-day visit to Saudi Arabia and failed to mend his government's differences with Saudi leaders over the US intentions on Iraq.
Cheney, who arrived in the Saudi Red Sea port city of Jeddah late Saturday after a short stop in Abu Dhabi, the United Arab Emirates, held talks with Saudi King Fahd Ibn Abdul-Aziz, Crown Prince Abdullah Ibn Abdul-Aziz and other senior officials on the Middle East peace process, the Saudi initiative and prospects of an attack on Iraq.
Saudi Arabia is the sixth stop on Cheney's 11-nation Middle East tour, which has already taken him to Jordan, Egypt, Yemen, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.
One of Cheney's main goals is to drum up support for the "second phase" of the US-led war against terrorism and to promote Washington's campaign to stop Iraq from acquiring weapons of mass destruction.
However, several Arab leaders Cheney has met have expressed their opposition to any military action against Iraq.
At virtually every stop in the Arab world, Cheney has been told that an American military strike will destabilize the region.
Although Cheney and Abdullah did not tell the media what their exact opinion on Iraq is during their meeting, analysts say that Saudi Arabia, a key regional ally of the United States, will not give the country a hand in handling Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.
Saudi officials have reiterated that they will not allow the United States to "fly combat missions against Iraq from Saudi bases."
The oil-rich kingdom no longer sees Hussein as a threat, and throughout the Arab world there is a lot of sympathy for the plight of ordinary Iraqis under the UN Sanctions imposed to punish Iraq for its invasion of Kuwait in August 1990.
As for a possible US attack on Iraq, Abdullah, in an interview broadcast on Friday by American ABC News, said that "I do not believe it is in the United States' interests, or the region's interests, or the world's interests to do so."
He stressed: "I don't believe it will achieve the desired result," adding that "The same applies to Iran."
In his State of the Union address in January, US President George W. Bush branded Iraq, Iran and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea as an "axis of evil" seeking weapons of mass destruction, triggering fears that the United States might target Iraq in its next phase of its anti-terrorism campaign.
Shortly before Cheney's arrival, Abdullah, the kingdom's de facto ruler, warned that the United States cannot overthrow the Iraqi leader and that any strike against Iraq will just increase anti-US feelings in the region.
In another interview with CNN in Jeddah, Abdullah stressed that it is important for Iraq to remain unified.
Both Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, who met with Cheney earlier this week, have said that Saddam is close to allowing in the United Nations weapons inspectors, a step Arabs are pushing for to avert US military action.
The US Government, however, has indicated that merely allowing inspectors may not be enough, unless they are given full access.
(China Daily March 19, 2002)
