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July 27, 2007
U.S. Officials Voice Frustrations With Saudis, Citing Role in Iraq
By HELENE COOPER
This article was reported by Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti and Jim Rutenberg,
and written by Ms. Cooper.
WASHINGTON, July 26 - During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January,
Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed
to suggest that Iraq's prime minister could not be trusted.
One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to lie
low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at
Mr. Sadr's militia. Another document purported to offer proof that Mr.
Maliki was an agent of Iran.
The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah
of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said
administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis
remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America's most powerful
Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.
Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they
say has been Saudi Arabia's counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say
that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have
offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80
foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and
intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and
that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.
One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi
Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He
declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because,
he said, "That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who
is not."
Senior Bush administration officials said the American concerns would be
raised next week when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates make a rare joint visit to Jidda, Saudi Arabia.
Officials in Washington have long resisted blaming Saudi Arabia for the
chaos and sectarian strife in Iraq, choosing instead to pin blame on Iran
and Syria. Even now, military officials rarely talk publicly about the role
of Saudi fighters among the insurgents in Iraq.
The accounts of American concerns came from interviews with several senior
administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because
they believed that openly criticizing Saudi Arabia would further alienate
the Saudi royal family at a time when the United States is still trying to
enlist Saudi support for Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi government, and for other
American foreign policy goals in the Middle East, including an Arab-Israeli
peace plan.
In agreeing to interviews in advance of the joint trip to Saudi Arabia, the
officials were nevertheless clearly intent on sending a pointed signal to a
top American ally. They expressed deep frustration that more private
American appeals to the Saudis had failed to produce a change in course.
The American officials said they had no doubt that the documents shown to
Mr. Khalilzad were forgeries, though the Saudis said they had obtained them
from sources in Iraq. "Maliki wouldn't be stupid enough to put that on a
piece of paper," one senior Bush administration official said. He said Mr.
Maliki later assured American officials that the documents were forgeries.
The Bush administration's frustration with the Saudi government has
increased in recent months because it appears that Saudi Arabia has stepped
up efforts to undermine the Maliki government and to pursue a different
course in Iraq from what the administration has charted. Saudi Arabia has
also stymied a number of other American foreign policy initiatives,
including a hoped-for Saudi embrace of Israel.
Of course, the Saudi government has hardly masked its intention to prop up
Sunni groups in Iraq and has for the past two years explicitly told senior
Bush administration officials of the need to counterbalance the influence
Iran has there. Last fall, King Abdullah warned Vice President Dick Cheney
that Saudi Arabia might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war
against Iraq's Shiites if the United States pulled its troops out of Iraq,
American and Arab diplomats said.
Several officials interviewed for this article said they believed that Saudi
Arabia's direct support to Sunni tribesmen increased this year as the Saudis
lost faith in the Maliki government and felt they must bolster Sunni groups
in the eventuality of a widespread civil war.
Saudi Arabia months ago made a pitch to enlist other Persian Gulf countries
to take a direct role in supporting Sunni tribal groups in Iraq, said one
former American ambassador with close ties to officials in the Middle East.
The former ambassador, Edward W. Gnehm, who has served in Kuwait and Jordan,
said that during a recent trip to the region he was told that Saudi Arabia
had pressed other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council - which includes
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman - to give
financial support to Sunnis in Iraq. The Saudis made this effort last
December, Mr. Gnehm said.
The closest the administration has come to public criticism was an Op-Ed
page article about Iraq in The New York Times last week by Mr. Khalilzad,
now the United States ambassador to the United Nations. "Several of Iraq's
neighbors - not only Syria and Iran but also some friends of the United
States - are pursuing destabilizing policies," Mr. Khalilzad wrote.
Administration officials said Mr. Khalilzad was referring specifically to
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates, as well as Mr. Cheney and Stephen J. Hadley, the
national security adviser, have in recent months pressed their Arab
counterparts to do more to encourage Iraq's Sunni leaders to support Mr.
Maliki, senior administration officials said.
"This message certainly has been made very clear in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi," a
senior administration official said. "But there is a deep reserve directed
both at the person of the Maliki government but more broadly at the concept"
that Iraq's Shiites are "surrogates of Iran." Saudi Arabia has grown
increasingly concerned about the rising influence of Iran in the region.
A spokesman at the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not return telephone
calls on Thursday. But one adviser to the royal family said that Saudi
officials were aware of the American accusations. "As you know by now, we in
Saudi Arabia have been active in having a united Arab front to, first, avoid
further inter-Arab conflict, and at the same time building consensus to move
toward a peace settlement between the Arabs and Israel," he said. "How
others judge our motives is their problem."
Even as American frustration at Saudi Arabia grows, American military
officials are still cautious about publicly detailing the extent of the flow
of foreign fighters going to Iraq from Saudi Arabia. Earlier this month, for
instance, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the top American military spokesman in
Iraq, detailed the odyssey of a foreign fighter recently captured in Ramadi.
In his public account, General Bergner told reporters that the man had
arrived in Syria on a chartered bus, was smuggled into Iraq by a Syrian
facilitator, and was given instructions to carry out a suicide truck bombing
on a bridge in Ramadi. He did not identify the man's nationality, but
American officials in Iraq say he was a Saudi.
The American officials in Iraq also say that the majority of suicide bombers
in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and that about 40 percent of all foreign
fighters are Saudi. Officials said that while most of the foreign fighters
came to Iraq to become suicide bombers, others arrived as bomb makers,
snipers, logisticians and financiers.
American military and intelligence officials have been critical of Saudi
efforts to stanch the flow of fighters into Iraq, although they stress that
the Saudi government does not endorse the idea of fighters from Saudi Arabia
going to Iraq.
On the contrary, they said, Saudi Arabia is concerned that these young men
could acquire insurgency training in Iraq and then return home to carry out
attacks in Saudi Arabia - similar to the Saudis who turned against their
homeland after fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The Bush administration's relationship with Saudi Arabia has deteriorated
steadily since the United States invasion of Iraq, culminating in April
when, bitingly, King Abdullah, during a speech before Arab heads of state in
Riyadh, condemned the American invasion of Iraq as "an illegal foreign
occupation."
A month before that, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed a high-profile
meeting between Israelis and Palestinians, planned by Ms. Rice, by brokering
a power-sharing agreement between the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas,
and the militant Islamist group Hamas that did not require Hamas to
recognize Israel. While that agreement eventually fell apart, the Bush
administration, on both occasions, was caught off guard and became
infuriated.
But Saudi officials have not been too happy with President Bush, either, and
the plummeting of America's image in the Muslim world has led King Abdullah
to strive to set a more independent course.
The administration "thinks the Saudis are no longer behaving the role of the
good vassal," said Steve Clemons, senior fellow and director of the American
Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The Saudis, in turn, "see
weakness, they see a void, and they're going to fill the void and call their
own shots."
U.S. Officials Voice Frustrations With Saudis, Citing Role in Iraq
By HELENE COOPER
This article was reported by Helene Cooper, Mark Mazzetti and Jim Rutenberg,
and written by Ms. Cooper.
WASHINGTON, July 26 - During a high-level meeting in Riyadh in January,
Saudi officials confronted a top American envoy with documents that seemed
to suggest that Iraq's prime minister could not be trusted.
One purported to be an early alert from the prime minister, Nuri Kamal
al-Maliki, to the radical Shiite cleric Moktada al-Sadr warning him to lie
low during the coming American troop increase, which was aimed in part at
Mr. Sadr's militia. Another document purported to offer proof that Mr.
Maliki was an agent of Iran.
The American envoy, Zalmay Khalilzad, immediately protested to King Abdullah
of Saudi Arabia, contending that the documents were forged. But, said
administration officials who provided an account of the exchange, the Saudis
remained skeptical, adding to the deep rift between America's most powerful
Sunni Arab ally, Saudi Arabia, and its Shiite-run neighbor, Iraq.
Now, Bush administration officials are voicing increasing anger at what they
say has been Saudi Arabia's counterproductive role in the Iraq war. They say
that beyond regarding Mr. Maliki as an Iranian agent, the Saudis have
offered financial support to Sunni groups in Iraq. Of an estimated 60 to 80
foreign fighters who enter Iraq each month, American military and
intelligence officials say that nearly half are coming from Saudi Arabia and
that the Saudis have not done enough to stem the flow.
One senior administration official says he has seen evidence that Saudi
Arabia is providing financial support to opponents of Mr. Maliki. He
declined to say whether that support was going to Sunni insurgents because,
he said, "That would get into disagreements over who is an insurgent and who
is not."
Senior Bush administration officials said the American concerns would be
raised next week when Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense
Secretary Robert M. Gates make a rare joint visit to Jidda, Saudi Arabia.
Officials in Washington have long resisted blaming Saudi Arabia for the
chaos and sectarian strife in Iraq, choosing instead to pin blame on Iran
and Syria. Even now, military officials rarely talk publicly about the role
of Saudi fighters among the insurgents in Iraq.
The accounts of American concerns came from interviews with several senior
administration officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because
they believed that openly criticizing Saudi Arabia would further alienate
the Saudi royal family at a time when the United States is still trying to
enlist Saudi support for Mr. Maliki and the Iraqi government, and for other
American foreign policy goals in the Middle East, including an Arab-Israeli
peace plan.
In agreeing to interviews in advance of the joint trip to Saudi Arabia, the
officials were nevertheless clearly intent on sending a pointed signal to a
top American ally. They expressed deep frustration that more private
American appeals to the Saudis had failed to produce a change in course.
The American officials said they had no doubt that the documents shown to
Mr. Khalilzad were forgeries, though the Saudis said they had obtained them
from sources in Iraq. "Maliki wouldn't be stupid enough to put that on a
piece of paper," one senior Bush administration official said. He said Mr.
Maliki later assured American officials that the documents were forgeries.
The Bush administration's frustration with the Saudi government has
increased in recent months because it appears that Saudi Arabia has stepped
up efforts to undermine the Maliki government and to pursue a different
course in Iraq from what the administration has charted. Saudi Arabia has
also stymied a number of other American foreign policy initiatives,
including a hoped-for Saudi embrace of Israel.
Of course, the Saudi government has hardly masked its intention to prop up
Sunni groups in Iraq and has for the past two years explicitly told senior
Bush administration officials of the need to counterbalance the influence
Iran has there. Last fall, King Abdullah warned Vice President Dick Cheney
that Saudi Arabia might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war
against Iraq's Shiites if the United States pulled its troops out of Iraq,
American and Arab diplomats said.
Several officials interviewed for this article said they believed that Saudi
Arabia's direct support to Sunni tribesmen increased this year as the Saudis
lost faith in the Maliki government and felt they must bolster Sunni groups
in the eventuality of a widespread civil war.
Saudi Arabia months ago made a pitch to enlist other Persian Gulf countries
to take a direct role in supporting Sunni tribal groups in Iraq, said one
former American ambassador with close ties to officials in the Middle East.
The former ambassador, Edward W. Gnehm, who has served in Kuwait and Jordan,
said that during a recent trip to the region he was told that Saudi Arabia
had pressed other members of the Gulf Cooperation Council - which includes
Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman - to give
financial support to Sunnis in Iraq. The Saudis made this effort last
December, Mr. Gnehm said.
The closest the administration has come to public criticism was an Op-Ed
page article about Iraq in The New York Times last week by Mr. Khalilzad,
now the United States ambassador to the United Nations. "Several of Iraq's
neighbors - not only Syria and Iran but also some friends of the United
States - are pursuing destabilizing policies," Mr. Khalilzad wrote.
Administration officials said Mr. Khalilzad was referring specifically to
Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.
Ms. Rice and Mr. Gates, as well as Mr. Cheney and Stephen J. Hadley, the
national security adviser, have in recent months pressed their Arab
counterparts to do more to encourage Iraq's Sunni leaders to support Mr.
Maliki, senior administration officials said.
"This message certainly has been made very clear in Riyadh and Abu Dhabi," a
senior administration official said. "But there is a deep reserve directed
both at the person of the Maliki government but more broadly at the concept"
that Iraq's Shiites are "surrogates of Iran." Saudi Arabia has grown
increasingly concerned about the rising influence of Iran in the region.
A spokesman at the Saudi Embassy in Washington did not return telephone
calls on Thursday. But one adviser to the royal family said that Saudi
officials were aware of the American accusations. "As you know by now, we in
Saudi Arabia have been active in having a united Arab front to, first, avoid
further inter-Arab conflict, and at the same time building consensus to move
toward a peace settlement between the Arabs and Israel," he said. "How
others judge our motives is their problem."
Even as American frustration at Saudi Arabia grows, American military
officials are still cautious about publicly detailing the extent of the flow
of foreign fighters going to Iraq from Saudi Arabia. Earlier this month, for
instance, Brig. Gen. Kevin Bergner, the top American military spokesman in
Iraq, detailed the odyssey of a foreign fighter recently captured in Ramadi.
In his public account, General Bergner told reporters that the man had
arrived in Syria on a chartered bus, was smuggled into Iraq by a Syrian
facilitator, and was given instructions to carry out a suicide truck bombing
on a bridge in Ramadi. He did not identify the man's nationality, but
American officials in Iraq say he was a Saudi.
The American officials in Iraq also say that the majority of suicide bombers
in Iraq are from Saudi Arabia and that about 40 percent of all foreign
fighters are Saudi. Officials said that while most of the foreign fighters
came to Iraq to become suicide bombers, others arrived as bomb makers,
snipers, logisticians and financiers.
American military and intelligence officials have been critical of Saudi
efforts to stanch the flow of fighters into Iraq, although they stress that
the Saudi government does not endorse the idea of fighters from Saudi Arabia
going to Iraq.
On the contrary, they said, Saudi Arabia is concerned that these young men
could acquire insurgency training in Iraq and then return home to carry out
attacks in Saudi Arabia - similar to the Saudis who turned against their
homeland after fighting in Afghanistan in the 1980s.
The Bush administration's relationship with Saudi Arabia has deteriorated
steadily since the United States invasion of Iraq, culminating in April
when, bitingly, King Abdullah, during a speech before Arab heads of state in
Riyadh, condemned the American invasion of Iraq as "an illegal foreign
occupation."
A month before that, King Abdullah effectively torpedoed a high-profile
meeting between Israelis and Palestinians, planned by Ms. Rice, by brokering
a power-sharing agreement between the Palestinian president, Mahmoud Abbas,
and the militant Islamist group Hamas that did not require Hamas to
recognize Israel. While that agreement eventually fell apart, the Bush
administration, on both occasions, was caught off guard and became
infuriated.
But Saudi officials have not been too happy with President Bush, either, and
the plummeting of America's image in the Muslim world has led King Abdullah
to strive to set a more independent course.
The administration "thinks the Saudis are no longer behaving the role of the
good vassal," said Steve Clemons, senior fellow and director of the American
Strategy Program at the New America Foundation. The Saudis, in turn, "see
weakness, they see a void, and they're going to fill the void and call their
own shots."
