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Cheney to seek Saudi help on Iraq, Iran
By Olivier Knox
AFP
ABU DHABI
Petroleumworld.com 05 14 07US Vice President Dick Cheney headed for Saudi Arabia on Saturday to seek its aid in Iraq, two months after close ally King Abdullah slammed the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of that war-torn land.
Over the weekend, Cheney was also to visit Egypt and Jordan to wrap up a week-long Middle East visit aimed at encouraging Washington's friends to help pull Iraq's minority Sunni Muslims into the country's fragile political process.
The vice president's diplomatic mission also aims to win the US allies' help in curbing the influence of a rising Iran, amid talk that the Islamic republic and Saudi Arabia are in the early skirmishes of a proxy war in Iraq.
Some US officials and analysts worry that sectarian violence there may be fed by support for Iraq's Sunnis from predominantly Sunni Saudi Arabia and backing for the Shiite majority from majority Shiite Iran.
"I don't think it's a proxy war at this stage. That's not the way I perceive it," Cheney told Fox News television in an interview on Thursday. "I don't think that's the case yet."
Cheney's talks in Abu Dhabi came on the eve of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's arrival in the United Arab Emirates on Sunday, in the first visit since Iran's 1979 Islamic revolution by an Iranian head of state to the close US Gulf ally.
The US vice president also hoped to use his considerable influence in Saudi Arabia -- forged during the 1991 Gulf War and his oil industry dealings -- to smooth over relations badly strained by sectarian violence in Iraq.
In late March, tensions boiled over when King Abdullah opened an annual Arab summit in Riyadh with a speech denouncing the "illegitimate foreign occupation" of Iraq and warning that "ugly sectarianism threatens civil war."
The king also refused to meet with Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki, with a Riyadh-based Arab diplomat saying it was because the monarch believed Maliki had deepened the sectarian divide in his country.
But a top Cheney aide, briefing reporters, said Riyadh's other actions -- including significant Iraqi debt forgiveness -- spoke just as loud as that diplomatic snub.
"I think on the whole, Saudi leadership is a very good thing, given the strength and enduring nature of our relationship with the Saudis and the amount of work and cooperation we've done over the years," the aide said.
The White House sees Saudi Arabia as a cornerstone ally in its campaign to isolate Iran and curtail Tehran's nuclear programme, which Washington says is a cover for a efforts to build an atomic arsenal. Iran denies the charge.
Before leaving Abu Dhabi, Cheney met on Saturday with UAE President Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed al-Nahayan, Prime Minister Sheikh Mohammad bin Rashid al-Maktoum and the deputy commander of the UAE armed forces, Sheikh Mohammad bin Zayed al-Nahayan, who is also crown prince of the emirate of Abu Dhabi.
On Friday, Cheney warned from the hangar deck of a US aircraft carrier in the Gulf that the United States would "stand with others to prevent Iran from gaining nuclear weapons and dominating this region."
He delivered the warning aboard the nuclear-powered USS John C. Stennis as it cruised about 240 kilometres (150 miles) off Iran.
AFP 12 1127 GMT 05 07
Copyright© 2007 AFP. All Rights Reserved.
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