ALBUQUERQUE (New Mexico), Aug 12: Much the way their predecessors warred over Sino-US ties in past elections, US President George W. Bush and Democratic White House hopeful John Kerry are trading blows over Saudi Arabia.
Bush says he has led Riyadh to take a tougher stand on terrorism since the September 11, 2001 attacks, while Kerry has insinuated that the incumbent is too close to the Saudi royal family to force necessary changes to US policy.
"Before September 11, in Saudi Arabia, terrorists were raising money and recruiting and operating with little opposition. Today, the Saudi government is taking the fight to Al Qaeda, and America and the world are safer," Bush told cheering supporters on Tuesday.
The line has become a fixture of Bush's speech to voters, part of his election-year argument that he has made the United States and the world more secure since the attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon in 2001.
"I want an America that relies on its own ingenuity and innovation, not the Saudi royal family," Kerry said in the highest-profile speech of his political life, accepting his party's nomination for president.
The charge is part of a broader attack on Bush and especially Vice President Dick Cheney as back-room deal-cutters who put corporate profits ahead of public interest in making policy.
Both candidates say they want to wean the United States from its addiction to oil imports, which appeals both to environmental worries and to the US public's deep unease over dependence on the Middle East.
Saudi Arabia has largely replaced China as an election-year bugbear, becoming "a symbol" of crucial issues facing the United States, according to Allan Lichtman, a political scientist at American University in Washington.
It is shorthand "most of all for oil, which of course has a profound impact on the American economy; number two terrorism, and is it, was it, a base for terrorists and is it being cleaned up; number three women's rights and democratic rights," he said by telephone.
But even if Kerry wins, US policy towards Saudi Arabia is unlikely to change, he said. "They have a heck of a lot more leverage over us that we have over them: They're a tiny country sitting on top of a whole lot of oil, and we're a large country that needs a whole lot of oil," said Lichtman.
When Bush's father, former president George Bush, faced then-governor Bill Clinton, the challenger frequently assailed Bush's handling of policy towards China, accusing him of looking the other way from alleged human rights abuses.
The younger Bush has been dogged by persistent allegations that he has close ties to the Saudi royal family and that he even cut a deal under which Riyadh would boost oil output to lower gas prices to help Bush win the election.
On Wednesday, Saudi Arabian Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi said the kingdom was ready to increase oil output by 1.3 million barrels per day (bpd) "immediately" to cope with world demand and curb soaring prices. But markets largely ignored the announcement, and one Bush aide told AFP on condition of anonymity that the move would do little to bring down soaring US gas prices before the election.
And the Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, emerged from an April White House meeting insisting that "we didn't make any deals that could interfere in our friend's internal affairs." -AFP