RIYADH, Jan 5: In the background of growing suspicion between Saudi Arabia and Hezbollah, King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia met a senior Hezbollah delegation last week in Jeddah. This was the first reported high-level contact between the kingdom and the Hezbollah guerrilla movement. The meeting first reported in the Lebanese press was also confirmed by the Saudi ambassador in Beirut.

“It was a good meeting, and Saudi Arabia is an open field where all the Lebanese sides can meet, and so it is not surprising that this meeting happened,” Saudi Ambassador to Lebanon Abdel Aziz Khoja emphasised.

Hezbollah’s deputy leader, Sheikh Naim Qassem, and former Electricity and Water Minister Mohammad Fneish, who had resigned from the government in protest, flew to Jeddah on a private Saudi jet late in December before Haj for a meeting with the monarch and his foreign minister.