Concession is likely to improve relations - for the time being

Published on Saturday 9 August 2003 01:00

THE Royal pardon for the seven Britons jailed in connection with a bombing campaign is likely to end the latest diplomatic tussle between the British government and the House of Saud.

But precedent suggests that it will not be long before relations between the countries become strained again.

The inherent conflict between Saudi Arabia’s regressive system of government and Britain’s western liberalism mean rifts between the countries are inevitable.

Faced with this grim reality, the Foreign Office has adopted the same approach to conducting diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia as a schoolchild does to eating liver - an unpleasant experience that is supposedly good for you.

Successive governments have recognised that Saudi Arabia tolerates widespread human rights abuses, treats women as second-class citizens and uses a form of justice that is completely alien to western concepts of fairness.

On the other hand, the House of Saud, while not a model of democracy, has been a consistent diplomatic ally of Britain and the United States when other countries in the Middle East have been unreliable or completely hostile.

For this reason it has been the duplicitous policy of the Foreign Office in London and the state department in Washington to maintain relations that are as cordial as possible. The relationship is based as much on diplomatic necessity as on economic advantage.

Oil for the US, arms for the British, whose trade links are so extensive that in 1996 Saudi Arabia was the 13th biggest importer of British goods, with a total of 2.5 billion.

When thousands of British jobs are at risk - a quotation copyright of all governments for the past two decades - it is deemed unhelpful to criticise too loudly Saudi Arabia’s system of government, its legal structure and its attitude to human rights.

The British approach was articulated recently in the Commons by the Foreign Office minister Bill Rammell, who was asked to explain why the government was not more forceful in demanding justice for Sandy Mitchell and his colleagues.

"We do believe that pressure is most effectively undertaken by engaging the Saudi authorities in private, because we believe that publicity will be detrimental to the interests of the men," he said.

In Foreign Office parlance, Mr Rammell was explaining that the Saudis are so sensitive to criticism that it was not in Britain’s commercial or diplomatic interest to complain too loudly.

The government has not forgotten the experience in 1980 when the television film Death of a Princess prompted Saudi Arabia to withdraw its ambassador and cancel 200 million of arms contracts.

More recently, the jailing of the two British nurses, Lucille McLauchlan and Deborah Parry in 1996 for the alleged murder of their colleague, Yvonne Gilford, even though they were eventually pardoned, saw a 40 million loss to Britain’s arms industries.

Then, as with the case of Mr Mitchell, the government adopted, successfully, a softly-softly approach. The greatest threat to relations is not miscarriages of justice or human rights abuses - on those Britain is quite prepared to abandon its ethical foreign policy - but Saudi Arabia’s reported failure to confront al-Qaeda.

In the run-up to military action against Iraq, London and Washington were grateful for Saudi support, acknowledging it came at the risk of domestic unpopularity.

For the coalition it was not just a question of air bases. Saudi Arabia’s influence is such that if it had turned against the United States, then Kuwait, Qatar and Oman would probably have followed.

The reward for such loyalty has been less forthcoming. Last week a US congressional report on the lessons of 11 September concluded Saudi Arabia, not Iraq, posed the greater danger.

Given that 15 of the 19 hijackers were, like Osama bin Laden, citizens of Saudi Arabia, that was not a surprisingly conclusion. But the report went further, suggesting al-Qaeda received money from individuals and groups in Saudi Arabia and the government was uncooperative in the hunt for terrorists after 11 September.

To exacerbate matters, 28 pages of the report were suppressed on "national security" grounds - a move that has infuriated the Saudis, who feel they are being wrongly accused without evidence. "The fact that bin Laden is the leader of the al-Qaeda does not mean to say that it is a Saudi organisation or group," said Prince Turki al-Faisal, the head of Saudi Arabia’s intelligence service.

British officials were equally keen to set the record straight, insisting Saudi Arabia had been a "close ally" in the war against terrorism. A typically diplomatic response resulted after a question on if Britain’s concerns over human right abuses were destabilising the friendship between the two countries.

"If there’s a problem in one area that doesn’t mean we cannot deal in other areas. We have this strong friendship which allows us to pursue difficult issues," the official said.

BUBBLE WAITING TO BURST

ONE of the most devout and insular countries in the Middle East, Saudi Arabia emerged from being an underdeveloped desert kingdom to become one of the wealthiest nations in the region thanks to vast oil resources.

Recently, however, tensions that threaten its stability and its status on the world stage have started to surface. Most ominously among these is the high unemployment which is adding to the number of potential recruits for radical Islamic organisations.

Unemployment runs at 15-20 per cent - but foreign migrants continue to account for some 65 per cent of the workforce, raising fears that increasing numbers of unemployed Saudi youths could be drawn to terror groups. There is also strong evidence that Islamic extremists opposed to Riyadh’s close relationship with the United States and Britain could be responsible for the bombings.

Earlier this year, the US said it was removing virtually all forces from the kingdom as they were no longer needed after the war in Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein. However, Saudi Arabia is still left with serious economic and political challenges.

Oil revenues comprise about three-quarters of the national income, making the country highly vulnerable to world price fluctuations. The civil service is overstaffed, the educational system is out of tune with the needs of the economy, and corruption and waste are rife.

Many observers believe the Saudi authorities are obsessed with presenting a picture of stability and calm to overseas investors and its large western workforce and does not want to admit that Islamic terror groups might be in operation.

David Capitanchick, an expert in Middle Eastern affairs from Robert Gordon University, said: "The problem for Saudi Arabia is that for years, it has been in denial over terrorist networks, including al-Qaeda, by buying them off in the hope they won’t attack the country. They have effectively created a monster as these groups are carrying out attacks on westerners. Many Islamists also feel that the royal family has embraced a decadent western lifestyle when abroad, [and this] together with increasing unemployment is creating a pressure-cooker situation."