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MID-EAST REALITIES © - www.MiddleEast.Org - Washington - 6/10: Normally one of the last places one would turn for truthfulness, integrity, and information would be the Saudi royal family. Currently headed by a former playboy who drank, gambled, and womanized his life away in Beirut and London -- before assuming the throne -- it is the Saudi "royal family which epitomizes the "client regime" realities that have so fractured, weakened, and prostrated the whole region once known as "the Arab world." And of course it was only a decade ago now that King Fahd was visited by then Defense Secretary Cheney, accompanied by the Washington Saudi Ambassador, and told (not asked) American forces were about to descend on the Kingdom in what has become essentially a masked American occupation of Arabia. Just as an aside, in those days Osama bin-Laden was also visiting King Fahd -- he was then a member of one of the Kingdom's most prominent families and a most welcome visitor to the Royal Palace.
The Americans are working hard to cover up all the war talk. But their actions betray their words and reveal their real concerns: A Secretary of State cancelling trips to remain in Washington to "preside" over things with everyone in the region. The Head of the CIA personally, as never before in history, taking charge of a region in person acting as a kind of day-to-day pro consul, like in the day of Roman rule. Leading Western diplomats and covert types running rampant throughout the region from one capital to the next, desperately trying to preserve the whole facade of "client regimes" and financial interests created largely on their behalf and kept in place for nearly a century now through constant Western intervention and manipulation.
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah has warned of the prospect of a Middle East war, accusing Israel of raising Middle East bloodshed to "unacceptable" levels.
Abdullah told German magazine Der Spiegel that the region is "sitting on a powder keg" that could "explode at any time".
He added that such a war "would not only affect Israelis and Arabs but many parts of the world" but did not elaborate any further.
Abdullah, who ended a three-day official visit to Germany on Friday, blamed Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon for eight months of violence that has left 484 Palestinians and 108 Israelis dead.
He told the magazine: "The bloodshed is reaching levels we can no longer accept. The Israeli war machine takes aim daily at unarmed people who are at the most throwing stones."
Abdullah said Palestinian attacks against Israelis were "a sign of desperation and frustration", and that Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat could only stop his people's revolt if Israel ends the "cancerous growth of settlements in Palestinian areas".
Abdullah, who met Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder during his stay in Berlin, encouraged the European Union to mediate in the Middle East and said Germany should not be restrained by historic traumas.
"The crimes of the Nazis against the Jews must not serve as an excuse for accepting crimes against the Palestinians," he told the magazine. [This Is London - 9 June]
| Mid-East Realities | www.middleeast.org |
| Source: http://www.middleeast.org/articles/2001/6/236.htm |