King Abdullah Greets Obama in Saudi Arabia

By Scott WilsonWashington Post Staff Writer Wednesday, June 3, 2009; 8:09 AM
RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, June 3--American flags are hanging next to the green banner of the Saudi kingdom on the street-light poles of this desert capital, a celebratory nod to the arrival of President Obama, who on Wednesday landed here to begin a five-day tour through the Middle East and Europe.
Obama will hold a day of meetings with King Abdullah on Iran's nuclear program and the dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace process, among other issues. It is his first presidential visit to the Arab Middle East.
At a tarmac welcoming ceremony, Obama was greeted by the 84-year-old Saudi leader. The two strode down a red carpet lined by ranks of Saudi soldiers, U.S. and Saudi flags flying taut in a brisk, dry wind. A military band then played the Star-Spangled Banner.
The leaders were then scheduled to travel to King Abdullah's farm at Jenadriyah, not far from Riyadh. The king hosted a dinner there last year for then-President Bush featuring an Arabian horse show and a falconry exhibition.
This stop was a late addition to Obama's itinerary, the centerpiece of which is his Thursday address in Cairo to the Islamic world.
It comes as Obama is pushing for early progress on Middle East peace efforts and reaching out to Iran's leaders over their nuclear program - two major and intertwined foreign policy gambits that so far have yielded few results.
With its vast oil wealth and supreme religious importance in the Islamic world as the site of Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia has long been a leading Sunni Arab player in the region, an influence Abdullah has sought to deepen in recent yearsAbdullah has asserted Saudi diplomacy aggressively in Lebanon and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was the first to propose broad Arab recognition of Israel in return for its withdrawal from all territory occupied in the 1967 Middle East War, and he has sought in the past to broker unity government agreements between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.
Obama has suggested that Abdullah's peace proposal, adopted by the Arab League in 2002 and now known as the Arab Peace Initiative, may serve as a way to revive talks between Israelis, Palestinians and Arab countries, only two of which now recognize the Jewish state.
After a meeting with Obama last month, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu indicated that he would welcome more regional participation in future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He said he "would like to broaden the circle of peace to include others in the Arab world, if we could."
Those talks are being held up now by Palestinian concerns over Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and Netanyahu's refusal to endorse the creation of an independent Palestinian state as the best way to achieve peace.
The Obama administration may be taking more of an outside in view of the conflict, hoping a gesture from Arab nations such as this one might push Israel toward peace with the Palestinians. Obama has already hosted King Abdullah II of Jordan and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas at the White House, in addition to Netanyahu. The U.S. president is meet two other key players in regional peace efforts on this trip -- Saudi Arabia's Abdullah and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak.
After his meeting with Obama last week, Abbas said: "I believe that if the Israelis would withdraw from all occupied Palestinian, Syrian, and Lebanese land, the Arab world will be ready to have normal relationships with the state of Israel."
But one element of the Arab Peace Initiative that some Israeli officials say must be removed is its endorsement of the so-called right of return. That would allow Palestinian refugees, who along with their descendents number in the millions, to return to homes inside Israel. If many of them did so, Israel's character as a Jewish-majority state would be threatened.
Obama may be here seeking Abdullah's agreement to soften that reference, along with encouraging some other steps toward normalization.
Saudi officials have privately expressed frustration over being asked to make concessions when the Israeli government continues to build settlements in territory envisioned as part of the future Palestinian state. By endorsing the so-called roadmap in 2003, Israel's government agreed to "freeze all settlement activity."
Obama, too, is at odds with Netanyahu over the settlement issue, although it is unclear what pressure if any he intends to exert on the Israeli government to bring such construction to a halt. The broader Israeli-Palestinian conflict is one he has said he intends to address in his speech at Cairo University, while warning that he will not propose a specific plan for peace.
Netanyahu is interested in regional talks -- something past Israeli governments have strenuously resisted -- because he believes Israel's interests and those of Sunni Arab powers such as Saudi Arabia are aligned on one major issue: Iran's nuclear program.
While Israel considers what it believes is Iran's pursuit of a nuclear weapon to be an existential threat, Saudi Arabia sees it as a destabilizing force threatening its own regional influence.
Becoming the region's second nuclear power -- Israel has its own undeclared nuclear weapons program - would be the latest and largest Iranian encroachment on traditional Saudi turf.
Private Saudi money, for example, funded the armed Islamist group Hamas for years. But the group now receives money and military training from Shiite Iran, as well. In Lebanon, too, Saudi and Iranian-backed parties are at odds for decisive control of the government.