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President-elect Barack Hussein Obama - Source: Reuters
US President Barack Obama will meet Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah
in Riyadh next week to seek his support over the nuclear stand-off
with Iran and reviving the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Obama will visit Riyadh on June 3 in a surprise addition to his
scheduled three-day trip to Egypt, Germany and France, White House
spokesman Robert Gibbs said.
Saudi Arabia, the world's top oil exporter, is a staunch US ally in
the region and potentially a key player in the drive for a solution
to the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, which Obama has declared a top
foreign policy priority.
The Obama administration has embraced the 2002 Arab peace
initiative, a proposal authored by Saudi Arabia that offered Israel
normal ties with all Arab states in return for a full withdrawal
from the lands it seized in the 1967 Middle East war, creation of a
Palestinian state and a just solution for Palestinian
refugees.
Gibbs dismissed the idea the Saudi stop was added to persuade Arab
states to make conciliatory gestures to Israel.
"The president believes it's an important opportunity to discuss
important business, like Middle East peace, but it's not born out
of anything specific," he said.
Gibbs last week scotched speculation that Obama would use his
much-anticipated speech to Muslims, which he is due to deliver in
Egypt on June 4, to unveil a new Middle East peace
initiative.
Obama has held talks with Jordan's King Abdullah and Israeli Prime
Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in recent weeks as part of efforts to
jump-start stalled Palestinian-Israeli peace moves and will meet
Palestinian Prime Minister Mahmoud Abbas at the White House on
Thursday.
Anti-Iran alliance
The visit to Saudi Arabia comes as Obama is seeking to build an
alliance of moderate Muslim nations to put pressure on Iran to halt
its uranium enrichment program, which Washington fears is a cover
to build a nuclear bomb.
Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal called in March for
Arabs to agree on how to tackle Iran's nuclear program, which
Tehran insists is for electricity generation.
Obama's administration has been at pains to reassure Saudi Arabia
that Washington's efforts to reach out diplomatically to Iran will
not affect bilateral relations.
Saudi Arabia, which sees itself as the leader of mainstream Sunni
Islam, fears the growing regional power of non-Arab, Shiite Iran,
which backs Lebanese guerrilla group Hezbollah and Palestinian
Islamist factions such as Hamas and has considerable influence in
neighbouring Iraq.
The United States has raised the idea of sending Yemeni terrorism
detainees held at the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, which
Obama has said he will close by next January, to Saudi Arabia, as
Riyadh has a program to rehabilitate militants.
Saudi Arabia is among the United States' top 15 trading partners.
Last year, two-way trade was $108 billion, which equalled about two
percent of total US exports and imports.
Saudi Arabia exported $88.2 billion worth of oil and a few other
products to the United States in 2008 and imported $20.1 billion of
US goods.
