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JEDDAH, March 16: US Vice President Dick Cheney took his Mideast tour to the United Arab Emirates and top ally Saudi Arabia Saturday but found no support for new US strikes on Iraq while hearing protests about Israel’s attacks on Palestinians.
Cheney held talks with Saudi King Fahd in Jeddah on “Israel’s military escalation in the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” the official SPA news agency reported.
The two men “reviewed the latest developments on the international scene and in the Middle East, chiefly the Palestinian issue and the acts of extermination, killing and destruction to which the Palestinian people are being subjected by Israeli occupation forces,” SPA said.
Cheney and the Saudi monarch also discussed “ways of boosting cooperation between their two friendly countries,” the agency added.
The US vice president was later due to confer with Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz, the kingdom’s de facto ruler, on his Mideast peace initiative which is to be presented for endorsement to the March 27-28 Arab summit in Beirut.
Abdullah told ABC News Saturday most Arab states, including hardline Syria, backed the initiative, noting that “the details of any negotiations on refugees are up to the Israelis and Palestinians.”
The plan proposes full Arab diplomatic relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state’s withdrawal from all Arab lands captured in the 1967 Middle East war.
Cheney arrived from Abu Dhabi where Emirati President Sheikh Zayed bin Sultan Al-Nahyan “made it known to the American vice president that the Emirates are opposed to any military strike against Iraq,” the official WAM news agency said.
“There is a need to act with restraint in the interests of America, the region and the world,” Sheikh Zayed said, according to his minister of state for foreign affairs Sheikh Hamdan bin Zayed al-Nahyan, quoted by WAM.
Sheikh Zayed also urged the United States to “play a more active role in the search for peace in the Middle East and to put an end to the grave Israeli aggression against the Palestinian people.
“Unarmed Palestinians should not be put on an equal footing with those who bombard them with planes and tanks,” Hamdan quoted his president as saying.
Crown Prince Abdullah revealed his strong opposition to US threats to extend the “war on terror” to Iraq in an interview Thursday.
“I do not believe it is in the interest of the United States, or the interests of the region, or the world,” he told ABC.
“I do not expect (a strike) to lead to the required result, and the same applies to Iran,” Abdullah added.
“Saudi leaders are expected to voice their opposition to an eventual US strike, as made clear by Crown Prince Abdullah,” one Saudi official told AFP.
Such frankness from Saudi rulers is a by-product of the September 11 attacks on the United States blamed on Saudi dissident Osama bin Laden.
The accusations of being soft on terrorism fired by US media at the kingdom have put Saudi-US ties to the test and prompted a new openness from the royal family which has decided to hit back.
President George W. Bush’s repeated pistol waving and barely-veiled vows to topple President Saddam Hussein earn a bad press in a Gulf region concerned at the suffering of the Iraqi people and the unforeseen repercussions of regime change in Baghdad.
Cheney, on a Middle East tour to drum up support for the “fight against terror” which Washington is threatening to extend to Iraq, has already visited Jordan, Egypt, Yemen and Oman.
He will be in Bahrain on Sunday and was also to go to Qatar and Kuwait, as well as Israel and Turkey.
BLAIR: British Prime Minister Tony Blair sounded out his deeply divided European Union counterparts on the possibility of military strikes against Iraq at a two-day summit in Barcelona but said on Saturday that the time was not yet ripe for action.
Diplomats said Blair, right-hand ally of US President George W. Bush in his declared war on terrorism, prodded other leaders on the issue in one-on-one discussions on the sidelines of the EU’s two-day Barcelona summit on economic reform.
However, Blair, along with other EU leaders, slapped down a demand by Belgium for a formal discussion on the issue at the meeting, diplomats said.
They said Belgium was concerned that public opinion in the 15-nation bloc needed to be prepared for the imminence of another war, with Foreign Minister Louis Michel suggesting sending a European delegation to Baghdad on the issue.
“We are not at the point of decision on this matter. If, when, we are, no doubt we will discuss this,” Blair told a news conference as the summit ended.
“The subject is not ripe,” concurred a European diplomat. “And for lack of a consensus there is no point in dwelling on the EU’s divergences in public.”
The United States, and to a lesser extent Britain, have engaged in increased sabre-rattling towards Baghdad, alleging that it is developing weapons of mass destruction which need to be dealt with.
That has fuelled concerns among many countries that Washington is planning to extend the military action launched following the September 11 attacks in Afghanistan to the Gulf.
A spokesman for Blair acknowledged as the EU summit opened on Friday that members were deeply divided on the issue. He said Blair had already spoken to German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder, but stressed that his country was in no way trying to “dictate” to other EU members on the need for strikes against Iraq.
Moving to reassure his friends, Schroeder said the United States was “committed” to consulting Europe before taking any action against Iraq and diplomats said Germany had made clear that any military action against Iraq would have to be under a UN mandate.
European Commission President Romano Prodi on Saturday indicated that the bloc might oppose any eventual US attack.
Interviewed by BBC radio on the EU stance, Prodi said from Barcelona: “It is possible, but we are not talking about possibilities. We are now in this summit with an agenda on existing issues.”
“My position is one of deep worry about a possible attack on Iraq, because of the potential expansion of the conflict. It is a very delicate area,” he added.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi told reporters at the summit he was against the extension of military action.
French President Jacques Chirac urged Iraq to head off the threat of military action by respecting UN Security Council resolutions and allowing in UN weapons inspectors.—AFP
