Prince Turki al-Faisal: The report seemed to be very exhaustive and, definitely, the people putting it together should be commended. I think it drew several conclusions, which we are still studying. We'll look at them and see how they affect Saudi Arabia.
The Kingdom has always maintained that the situation in Iraq must be solved from inside Iraq. And the presence of American troops borrows from the statement — which is continually repeated to American audiences — which is because America came into Iraq uninvited, it should not leave Iraq uninvited. That means that the government of Iraq must enter into negotiations with Iraq politicians ...
We have basic interests. One is the stability for social and political [elements] ... and secondly, that territorial integrity of Iraq is maintained. And how do you achieve these things? This is where the challenge to the Iraqi government about.
PT: Well on all of these three issues Saudi Arabia has already been acting. We have not waited upon the Iraq Study Group to make these recommendations for us to act. From November 2003, just six or seven months after the invasion took place, Saudi Arabia called all of the neighboring countries of Iraq to a meeting in Saudi Arabia precisely to look at the developing situation in Iraq, and those meetings have been continuing since then. The last one was held at the United Nations last September during the General Assembly meeting. So that's one activity Saudi Arabia has implemented since 2003 to bring neighboring states of Iraq together so that they can look at the situation in Iraq and reach common goals and objectives ...
The other thing we have been very active in trying to bring Sunni and Shia together, and King Abdullah has met with all of the leading political officials in Iraq since Iraq established a government after the invasion ... During the month of Ramadan the Kingdom hosted the Sunni and Shia leaders to overcome their differences.
We don't think it is an issue of supporting one sect over another ... The Kingdom's opinion is that all of the citizens of Iraq are Iraqi's first and then Sunni, Shiite, Kurd, Turkmani, you name it, and that is how we're dealing with these issues, and on economic issues as well.
The first days of the toppling of Saddam Hussein were followed by immediate humanitarian aid that went through Saudi Arabia to Iraq with a field hospital that was established in Baghdad with Saudi doctors who stayed there for six months before the security situation became so untenable that they left.
We've also committed to providing aid in the range of $1 billion to Iraq at the Madrid conference a year and a half ago. And so the issue of the debt relief, that is on the cards. And we have offered to talk to the Iraqi Government on that issue. They haven't come back to us yet. All of the recommendations that the group has for Saudi Arabia have already been acted upon.
PT: I think that is a nearsighted vision of Saudi Arabia's interests. As I told you, our main interest is in stabilizing the situation in Iraq and maintaining the territorial integrity of Iraq. And it would be counter to our interest to have a continually disturbed Iraq whether it is through sectarian or ethnic violence.
Now, in our view the violence in Iraq today is driven by political ambition, not by sectarian or ethnic reasons. And the political ambition used sectarian and ethnicity for their purposes so that is why I said a political solution from inside Iraq is the only way we can solve this problem, not military, and definitely not one whereby one sect or anther can be described as becoming dominate in Iraq.
The constitution of Iraq was drawn up by Iraqi's more than a year and a half ago. It was voted on by Iraqi's more than a year ago. Not by all the Iraqi's because initially the Sunnis did not participate. And it was at the urging of Saudi Arabia that the Sunnis did participate subsequently in the formation of the parliament in Iraq, in December 2005 when more than seventy percent of the eligible electorate in Iraq participated, including the Sunnis and the Sunnis came into this national unity government and now they have vice presidents, vice premiers, they have ministers and they are well represented in the government.
Their political engagement will have to be taken into account and resolving the outstanding issues between the Sunnis and the Shiites and the Kurds in Iraq and these can be summarized with issues of devolution and the type of federal links that will keep Iraq territorially integral, and the other one is the distribution of natural resources and how that is going to be guaranteed for all Iraqi's. Those are the things Iraqi's have to work out with themselves.
PT: Strained is too strong a word to describe any aspect the U.S.-Saudi relationship. We have differences and have had historically from the very first meeting between Saudi and American leaders in 1945. President Roosevelt at the time came to King Abdullah with the proposition that Saudi Arabia should support the resettlement of Jewish refugees from Europe into Palestine. And King Abdullah countered, "Why inflict the suffering of European Jews which was caused by the Germans on the Palestinians?"
Instead he offered that the Jewish immigrants from Europe should be given the best lands in Germany to compensate them for the suffering they were dealt by the Germans and this difference that we've had with America over Palestine and Israel has continued with varying parameters as the situation changed.
Today our main difference, if there is such a difference, is on implementation of what is available in terms of solutions to that problem. President Bush in 2002 proposed a roadmap and he got the whole world to agree to it including Palestine and Israel, yet there has been no implementation. In 2002 also then Crown Prince, now King Abdullah offered a peace plan which was committed to by the Arab world completely. All Arab countries had signed up on it but there has been no implementation.
PT: Well I think basically it has to do with internal American politics, and getting any American president to make tough decisions on Israel and Palestine requires a great deal of political capital. If you remember at his inauguration speech in 2004, [Bush] said that he had a lot of political capital that he was going to expend [it] on problems facing the world including the Palestinian-Israeli problem. So, we're hoping that the president in the next two years while he's still president will more forward on that and we've some signs.
PT: That's for him to decide. It would be remiss for me, as a representative of a foreign power, to estimate whether the president has political capital or not.
PT: We don't know. It depends on how the new formation of the Congress will move on that issue. Although I've said so in public before, I think all of the friends of Israel and the United States should encourage Israel to reach a peace agreement with the Palestinians for the benefit of Israel, instead of having continued conflict and killing and disruption and destruction. It would be wise for Israeli leaders to move forward on that issue.
PT: Well now I think it's been proven to be the other way around. The road to solving the problems in Iraq and Lebanon and Iran and Afghanistan and all of the areas in our part of the world, and that has been our contention since day one.
It is the Palestinian tragedy is truly one of vast human scale. Not only in terms of deprivation but in the daily suffering Palestinian's face today. For their daily routine, a Palestinian in Gaza or the West Bank when he wakes up in the morning, to go to his job, he has to consider going through roadblocks where he is stopped for God knows how long, sometimes whole days on end, for whatever reasons the Israelis may have for the security situation that they may face.
He has to consider that when he get to the place where he is finally to the place he is going to get his job, his Israeli boss can say, "No you're fired" — just for that. He has to consider that on the way back from his job to his home, not only that he has to go through that roadblock again, but that in going through that roadblock he may be arrested for whatever reason, by Israeli security forces and taken off to a prison camp in Israel where more than 10,000 Palestinian prisoners are now incarcerated, and some of them have been there for literally decades without charge. All of these situations face the Palestinians.
On the other side, an Israeli citizen has to consider that on his way to a job, he may pass by a café or a bus station, or a taxi station where a bomb will explode that will cut off his arm or his leg or whatever and affect him for the rest of his life. And so it is those sufferings that we have to consider in encouraging both sides to reach a compromise.
PT: Most absolutely, and I will go further to tell you that Arab tradition and Muslim tradition is geared towards having an open mind. Muslim religion accepts Christianity and Judaism ... Our textbooks in Saudi Arabia that Freedom House was so critical of, are openly criticized in Saudi Arabia itself.
If you look at the press reporting in Saudi Arabia from five years before, their's been always a critical attitude taken by our public in Saudi Arabia on some of those textbooks which quite rightly were considered to be not only negative, but contrary to the basic teachings of Islam. That is why the Kingdom is in the process of revamping all of its educational system including the curriculum.
By the way, I had a meeting with the Freedom House people since that report was made ... .I urged them not to take the attitude of some media or some think tanks have not just on Saudi Arabia but on some other issues which is the "we got you" attitude; simply throwing things at you ...
I asked them to come and engage with us and let us exchange views on how we can prove what is recognized as Saudi Arabia as a deficient curricula in certain subjects. And so we are quite open to whatever shortcomings we have, whether it is in education or social structure, or in political practice and we're happy when people point these things out to us, because we can feel we can improve ourselves.
Just recently the Kingdom invited a group from Human Rights Watch, which is a humanitarian organization dealing with human rights, to visit the Kingdom, and gave them the freedom to engage with all aspects of the Kingdom including visits to prisons and prisoners, meeting whoever they wanted without monitoring or any overseers. I hope that when that report comes out from that trip by human rights watch that many of these previously held views of the Kingdom will change.
PT: I beg to differ. You're country is one of the most intensively capital punishment countries in the world. More people are punished capitally ratio wise than many other countries in the world. In my view there is nothing wrong with that because I think it stems out of the social system and the practice and the tradition that comes from within each society.
Original URL: http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/2006/12/08/16934/