September 21, 2003	Sunday	Rajab 23, 1424

SAN FRANCISCO, Sept 20: Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States said on Friday that his country was staunchly opposed to terrorism and had moved to discipline the radicals who had helped spread an anti-Western message before the attacks of Sept 11, 2001.

“Nine-eleven shook me to the roots because the confidence that was shaken was not with Congress or the media, it was with the American people,” Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz told a foreign affairs group here.

The prince said that the attacks were also a wake-up call that his government needed to move to address the attitudes of intolerance held by some in the country.

“The bad news is that we found some ugly things do exist,” said Prince Bandar. “The good news is that there was not nearly as much as you have been led to believe. If you watch the media you think everybody and their mother is an (Osama) bin Laden supporter, and that’s not true.”

But in remarks that were carefully balanced, Bandar Bin Sultan, a former fighter pilot, also said that America’s dominance in world affairs brought risks of its own.

“I personally feel it’s not in America’s interest to be the only game in town. It costs money and no one says thank you,” he said during an address to the World Affairs Council.

He also said he saw “a little bit of intellectual arrogance”, in the popular American notion that democracy was a “cure all” for all the world’s problems.

“It didn’t solve all your problems here,” the ambassador said when asked his thoughts about US efforts to make the Middle East more hospitable to democracy.

“My family has been in leadership (in Saudi Arabia) since 1747. You can call us many things, but politically stupid we are not,” he said. “We are not a holy monarchy. We are a working monarchy and every day we have our hand on the pulse.”

Bandar bin Sultan, who has served as Saudi Ambassador to the US since 1983, even joked about the two Bush presidencies: “It shows you guys are going in the direction toward monarchy. So don’t knock it.”

The prince has played a key role in navigating the relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which have grown increasingly tense since Sept 11. While the Saudi government says it has done everything possible to assist with the US war on terror, many US lawmakers have criticized Riyadh for providing only limited cooperation.

Prince Bandar, who rarely speaks in public, also used his remarks to defend the US-led invasion of Iraq

“Everybody in the world wanted that regime to collapse. This president had the guts to go and do it,” he said.—Reuters