07 February 2004	Saturday	15 Zilhaj 1424

AL-QATIF: Saudi Arabia's marginalized Shia minority wants fairer treatment but will not exploit the rising power of fellow Shias in Iraq for political gain, a leading religious leader said.

Shia preacher Hassan al-Saffar said his community was loyal to Saudi Arabia and had no ambitions for greater autonomy - even if a possible blueprint for a looser federal state emerges in post-Saddam Iraq.

"The Saudi government knows the loyalty of the Shia citizens to their country," Saffar said in an interview on Thursday. "Shias in the kingdom do not want anything special for themselves."

Shias are thought to form the majority in Saudi Arabia's oil-rich Eastern Province - although only 10 per cent of the population as a whole - and have close ties with Shias in southern Iraq who have gained political muscle following Saddam's overthrow.

Diplomats say Saudi Arabia's rulers are alarmed by the rising Shia influence across their border, fearing it could embolden Saudi Shias who say they have faced decades of discrimination

The government has expressed concern that Iraq could fragment along ethnic and religious lines, triggering conflict which could spread to its neighbours.

Saffar said Shias were beginning to find a voice in Saudi Arabia, partly through a "national dialogue" instituted last year by de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah.

"Before, no one mentioned in the Saudi media that there were Shias in the kingdom," said Saffar, who returned to his country from political exile 10 years ago.

But a prominent Sunni leader said last month that events in Iraq led to a "rashness" among Shias attending the dialogue and warned them against seeking political leverage from outside.

"Empowering oneself through foreign parties...or hinting at that is a strategic mistake," Salman al-Awdah said in an interview on Saudi television. Saffar said Shia demands were modest. "There is no special Shia request apart from equality with other citizens. The government knows that," he said.

Although he was in constant touch with Iraq's leading Shia leader Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, those contacts were purely religious. "As for politics, our decisions are local and are not taken by any party outside the country," Saffar said.

MOSQUE PERMITS: The US State Department report last year said Saudi Arabia's Shias were subject to "officially sanctioned political and economic discrimination" including limited job opportunities and restrictions on building their own mosques.

In al-Qatif, Saudi Arabia's Shia heartland, residents say they often lose out to less qualified Sunnis looking for work, suffer restrictions against their faith in Sunni-dominated schools and still have little access to the Saudi media.

Saffar also said a ground-breaking statement at last year's inaugural meeting of the national dialogue, which explicitly acknowledged the diversity of Muslim thought in the kingdom and called for political participation in the absolute monarchy, had yet to yield real results. -Reuters