Saudis see lesser evil in backing US on Iraq

A jittery Saudi Arabia seems to have plumped for backing a US-led war on Iraq, if launched under UN cover, as the least risky of an array of bad options.

"The balance of fear has shifted from offending domestic public opinion to offending the megapower," said Mai Yamani, a researcher at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs.

"The Saudis don't want to be next on the US list for regime change," she said.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal signalled that the kingdom was edging away from its declared opposition to any fresh assault on its neighbour only after US President George W. Bush told the United Nations he would ask the Security Council to enforce its disarmament resolutions on Iraq.

Asked if Saudi bases could be used against Iraq, the prince said: "If the United Nations takes a decision by the Security Council to implement a policy of the UN, every country that has signed the charter of the UN has to fulfil it."

Saudi Arabia had previously vowed to deny use of its bases, airspace or territory for any attack on Iraq. Its change of heart was a body blow to Baghdad's quest for Arab support.

Saudi officials argued that it was the United States, not Riyadh, that had switched policy by making clear that unilateral action against Iraq was not its preferred option.

The Iraq issue poses a painful dilemma for Saudi rulers who are aware that backing Washington may fuel popular anger, already running high over US support for Israel as it tries to crush a two-year-old Palestinian independence revolt.

"The Saudis want to avoid this at all costs," said Simon Henderson, who runs the British-based Saudi Strategies consultancy.

He said Riyadh remained nervous about the aftermath of any war to oust Iraqi President Saddam Hussein. "It is full of unknowns and the Saudis don't like uncertainty," he added.

The Saudis have already been grappling with the shock to US ties caused by last year's September 11 attacks, in which 15 of the 19 suicide hijackers were named as Saudi nationals.

"Barely suppressed anger remains the dominant mode of US-Saudi relations after September 11," wrote Washington-based defence consultant Josh Pollack in the Israel-based Middle East Review of International Affairs journal this month.

"Greater tests are likely to come," he said, citing the confrontation with Iraq and any decisive action by Israel against Palestinian President Yasser Arafat.

Henderson said hawks in the US administration, critical of alleged Saudi failures to cooperate fully in the fight against Saudi-born Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda network, felt that the conservative, oil-rich Islamic kingdom would be more expendable if a pro-Western government were installed in Baghdad.

"The Americans have heard all the Saudi promises in the past and have a very short list of Saudi promises kept," he said, citing what he said was continuing Saudi moral and financial support for groups such as the Palestinian Islamic Hamas.

Saudi Arabia, stung by charges that its puritan Wahhabi brand of Islam and its religiously-orientated education system fuel bin Laden-style extremism, has spent millions of dollars on a media campaign to repair its standing in the United States.

"True Muslims all over the world will never allow a minority of deviant extremists to speak in the name of Islam and distort its spirit of tolerance," Crown Prince Abdullah wrote of the hijackers in a September 11 anniversary letter to Bush.

Saudi dissident Saad al-Fagih said the media blitz and other bold Middle East peace initiative had failed to restore Riyadh's image in US eyes.

"So the only way for the royal family is a major concession, which is to cross the barrier and take the risk of supporting the Americans on Iraq," said Fagih, who leads the Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia from exile in London.

"They think the war might not go ahead, but they would at least take the credit for siding with America," he said.

Fagih said princely rivalries and the kingdom's outward calm hampered sensible decision-making in Riyadh.

"The royal family is deceived by the fact there are no civil institutions for people to express their anger through. This anger cooks up until it comes to a very dangerous level," he argued.

While few analysts see Saudi Arabia as being on the verge of the chaos that Fagih predicts, many argue that "regime change" in Iraq could have profound repercussions on the kingdom.

Yamani said that if the post-Saddam era led to democratic rule in Iraq to the benefit of its Shi'ite Muslim majority, this could revive disaffection among Saudi Arabia's own Shi'ite minority in the oil-rich Eastern Province.

Other provinces, such as Asir, on the border with Yemen, and even the Hejaz on the Red Sea coast, could grow restive about the perceived domination of the central Nejd heartland.

She said that educational reforms seen by Islamic clerics as a response to US pressure could spark a conservative backlash, while budget problems had made it harder for the ruling family to soothe social pressures with generous welfare provisions.

"There is some press freedom now, but the red lines are still there," she said. "In the absence of oil plenty, they can't control public opinion or pay people off."