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10-12-2009, 04:26 AM
Obama Risks Violence Unless He Pushes Mideast Peace, Turki Says
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By Henry Meyer
Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama risks triggering violence unless he follows through on his promises to promote Middle East peace, according to Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize awarded two days ago is a call on the U.S. president to step up efforts to facilitate a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Arabs by pressing Israel to make compromises, Turki, 64, said in an interview yesterday in Riyadh. “I hope that by the end of his term, he will have come to deserve it.”
“If he doesn’t take the bull by the horns on this issue, no one else will,” Turki said. “If he doesn’t, there will be more conflict, more bloodshed. It’s not going just to be confined to the West Bank and Gaza, as it has shown in the past 50 years, it has gone beyond the borders of the Middle East.”
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and a leading Arab power, has shown frustration at the failure of successive U.S. administrations to broker peace in the Middle East. A few months before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, now king, in a letter to then U.S. President George W. Bush demanded a more active U.S. peacemaking role.
“These things tend to take on a dynamic of their own,” Turki, whose brother Prince Saud al-Faisal is the kingdom’s foreign minister, said in an interview in his office in the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, which he heads. “Things have to be shown to be done quickly for people to maintain their confidence that something will be done.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aTNKTCK2hoAc
Share | Email | Print | A A A
By Henry Meyer
Oct. 11 (Bloomberg) -- President Barack Obama risks triggering violence unless he follows through on his promises to promote Middle East peace, according to Prince Turki al-Faisal, a former Saudi ambassador to the U.S.
Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize awarded two days ago is a call on the U.S. president to step up efforts to facilitate a peace agreement between the Israelis and the Arabs by pressing Israel to make compromises, Turki, 64, said in an interview yesterday in Riyadh. “I hope that by the end of his term, he will have come to deserve it.”
“If he doesn’t take the bull by the horns on this issue, no one else will,” Turki said. “If he doesn’t, there will be more conflict, more bloodshed. It’s not going just to be confined to the West Bank and Gaza, as it has shown in the past 50 years, it has gone beyond the borders of the Middle East.”
Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil exporter and a leading Arab power, has shown frustration at the failure of successive U.S. administrations to broker peace in the Middle East. A few months before the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, Crown Prince Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, now king, in a letter to then U.S. President George W. Bush demanded a more active U.S. peacemaking role.
“These things tend to take on a dynamic of their own,” Turki, whose brother Prince Saud al-Faisal is the kingdom’s foreign minister, said in an interview in his office in the King Faisal Center for Research and Islamic Studies, which he heads. “Things have to be shown to be done quickly for people to maintain their confidence that something will be done.”
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aTNKTCK2hoAc