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Prince Talal welcomes Saudi reform process
Half-brother of King Fahd says entire Arab world needs to embark on program
of change
Raed al-Amine
Daily Star staff, 11/29/03
BEIRUT: Prince Talal bin Abdel-Aziz, half-brother of
Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd bin Abdel-Aziz, told the Foreign Press Association
in Paris earlier this week that he welcomed the embryonic reform process
getting underway in his country, but is worried that recent devastating bomb
attacks there were intended to bring down the monarchy.
Prince Talal, president of the Arab Gulf Program for United Nations
Development Organizations, expressed his relief that reforms have started to
take effect in Saudi Arabia, saying such measures are necessary across most
of the Arab region.
“I am one of several persons who have been demanding reforms for many years.
Therefore, I believe that the hopes and demands of those who have been
seeking reforms are now being realized. This is a good thing. Reforms are
not required only in Saudi Arabia … we are in need of democracy and human
rights in most of the Arab countries,” he said.
But while welcoming reform, the prince expressed a fear widely held among
the Saudi rulers that terror organizations are now directly targeting their
hold on power.
“Unfortunately, the terrorist operations that have afflicted Saudi Arabia
are intended to destabilize the regime,” he said Tuesday.
Prince Talal called for those who incite violence to be put on trial,
including radical clerics who he named as leading instigators of terror.
“One of their theoreticians is a senior sheikh called Sheikh Ali bin Khodeir
al-Khodeir, and there is another who goes by the name of Sheikh Nassir ibn
Hamad al-Fahd. They had been preaching to these individuals and encouraging
them to become terrorists by issuing fatwas (religious rulings) and
authoring books to this effect.
“A few days ago, we were surprised to see these two men retreating from
their fatwas. Is the fatwa a game? Does this mean that you can issue a fatwa
to shed the blood of people? How many victims fell after they issued these
fatwas? How many men, women and children died because of these fatwas? They
must stand trial,” he said.
The prince also said the Saudis will turn into human shields to defend their
country against any US attempt to partition it. Prince Talal claimed Saudi
Arabia has come to know through senior US officials that there were plans to
partition the region.
Asked whether such reports were mere rumors, Prince Talal replied that US
President George W. Bush had said the US should reconsider its relations
with countries that do not have democratic government. US Secretary of State
Colin Powell has also alluded to a possible reconsideration of the Middle
East map, explained the prince.
On the Iraqi issue, he said that what is happening on the ground today could
be described as “resistance.”
“It is quite right to say that this resistance’s nature is still unknown,
but, no doubt it is mostly an Iraqi one, despite some intruders here and
there, penetrating the borders. On the other hand, we refuse to describe it
as resistance when it attacks Iraqi institutions and interests,” he said.
Moving on to other regional issues, Prince Talal had some reflections on
Lebanon. He hoped that sectarianism in the troubled state “would disappear
some day and a unified national spirit takes its place, where differences
between Christians and Muslims would vanish.”
He saw Lebanon as the “lung of the Arab world,” a “bridge between the East
and the West,” and an “arena of democracy, freedom and tolerance.”
He also mentioned the Palestinian cause, saying “it is a flammable issue,
and there are a lot of peace plans being put on the table, but their fate is
doomed because we believe … that the US’ desired solution to the
Palestine-Israeli conflict is the disastrous Sharonite solution (referring
to Israeli PM Ariel Sharon).”
He said Palestinian resistance fighters shouldn’t be branded “terrorists”
because that would mean George Washington and Charles de Gaulle were also
terrorists.
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| Earth, a planet hungry for peace |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers (Ran Cohen, pmc, 5/24/03). |
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| The Israeli apartheid (security) wall around Palestinian population centers in the West Bank, like a Python (Alquds, 1/25/03. |
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