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Saudi diplomat speaks of US ‘intellectual arrogance’

* Says America’s dominance in world affairs brings its own risks

SAN FRANCISCO: Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States said on Friday that his country was staunchly opposed to terrorism and had moved to discipline the clerics who had helped spread an anti-Western message before the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“Nine-eleven shook me to the roots because the confidence that was shaken was not with Congress or the media, it was with the American people,” Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz told a foreign affairs group here.

Bin Sultan said that the attacks were also a wake-up call that his government needed to move to address the attitudes of intolerance held by some in the kingdom.

“The bad news is that we found some ugly things do exist,” said Bin Sultan. “The good news is that there was not nearly as much as you have been led to believe. If you watch the media you think everybody and their mother is an (Osama) bin Laden supporter, and that’s not true.”

But in remarks that were carefully balanced, Bin Sultan, a former fighter pilot, also said that America’s dominance in world affairs brought risks of its own.

“I personally feel it’s not in America’s interest to be the only game in town. It costs money and no one says thank you,” he said during an address to the World Affairs Council.

Bin Sultan also said he saw “a little bit of intellectual arrogance,” in the popular American notion that democracy was a “cure all” for all the world’s problems.

“It didn’t solve all your problems here,” the ambassador said when asked his thoughts about US efforts to make the Middle East more hospitable to democracy.

“My family has been in leadership (in Saudi Arabia) since 1747. You can call us many things, but politically stupid we are not,” he said. “We are not a holy monarchy. We are a working monarchy and every day we have our hand on the pulse.”

Bin Sultan, who has served as Saudi Ambassador to the US since 1983, even joked about the two Bush presidencies: “It shows you guys are going in the direction toward monarchy. So don’t knock it.”

Bin Sultan has played a key role in navigating the relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, which have grown increasingly tense since Sept. 11, when 15 of the 19 suicide hijackers were identified as Saudi nationals. While the Saudi government says it has done everything possible to assist with the US war on terror, many US lawmakers have criticized the kingdom for providing only limited cooperation.

Bin Sultan, who rarely speaks in public, also used his remarks on Friday to defend the US-led war in Iraq

“Everybody in the world wanted that regime to collapse. This president had the guts to go and do it,” he said. —Reuters

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