U.S.-Saudi Relations Show Signs of Stress

[kskiska]

Official Calls Reformers U.S. 'Agents'

JIDDAH, Saudi Arabia -- Gina Abercrombie-Winstanley, the U.S. consul general here, waited outside a restaurant for evening prayers to end so she could enter. Suddenly, a Saudi religious policeman barred her way, pointing out that she was not wearing an abaya, the black cloak required of Saudi women in public.

She was a U.S. diplomat, she told him. He spit in his hand and rubbed it on the sole of his shoe. "This is what I think of your diplomatic status," he said, Abercrombie-Winstanley recounted in a recent interview.

Abercrombie-Winstanley, 46, an ebullient career diplomat, was undeterred. She began meeting with Saudi reformers who were impressed by stories of last year's encounter, which gave her a taste of the realities they face.

Last month, it was the Saudi government that tried to block Abercrombie-Winstanley's path, warning the reformers in Jiddah to stop meeting with her and other U.S. diplomats. On March 22, the Saudi interior minister, Prince Nayef, delivered blunt words at a meeting of about a dozen reform leaders, according to two Saudi reformers who were there.

Disparaging the reformers as "agents of America," Nayef said: "The government is not weak and the United States will not protect you," according to one of them, who spoke on condition that he not be identified by name because he feared arrest.

more…
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A28719-2004Apr20.html

[Mistress Quickly]

1. Good n/t

[brokensymmetry]

2. Wonder what happens if they get really irritated?

And turn off the oil - for, oh, say, a couple weeks?