Let's add the Saudis to the fun!
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/27/world/middleeast/27saudi.html?pagewanted=print
July 27, 2007
Saudis Role in Iraq Frustrates U.S. Officials
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 Iraqs 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. Sadrs 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 Americas 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 Arabias 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 wouldnt 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 administrations 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 Iraqs
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 Arabias 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 Iraqs 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 Iraqs
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 Iraqs 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 mans 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.
