JIDDA, Saudi Arabia -- Saudi Arabia's foreign minister gave voice yesterday to simmering tensions between the desert kingdom and the Bush administration, insisting his country is doing all it can to block Saudi militants from crossing the border into Iraq as insurgents and saying he was "astounded" at recent criticism of its efforts by a senior U.S. official.
The comments by Saud al-Faisal, at a news conference while flanked by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates, came during their high-profile visit aimed at pushing Saudi and other Sunni Arab allies to do more to help the beleaguered Shiite-dominated Iraqi government.
The bilateral relationship with Saudi Arabia, one of the most important for the U.S. in the region, has shown signs of strain in recent months over the situation in Iraq, most publicly in March when Saudi King Abdullah called the U.S. presence in Iraq an "illegal foreign occupation."
Zalmay Khalilzad, the former U.S. envoy to Iraq who recently became the administration's ambassador to the United Nations, hit back last month, writing in The New York Times that "some friends of the United States" that neighbor Iraq "are pursuing destabilizing policies" toward Baghdad.
Although Khalilzad did not mention Saudi Arabia by name, the comments were widely viewed as a swipe at Riyadh.
"I was astounded by what he said, especially since we have never heard from him these criticisms when he was here," Faisal said, when asked by reporters about Khalilzad's comments. "I ascribed that to his being in the United Nations in New York and not in Iraq."
Faisal defended his country's record on limiting Saudi nationals from entering Iraq, where Iraqi officials insist they make up nearly half of all foreigners fighting Iraqi and American security forces. Faisal insisted Saudi Arabia was already doing "all that we can do" to block extremists traveling into Iraq.
Instead, he pointed the finger at Baghdad, saying a heavier flow of radicals was entering Saudi Arabia from Iraq.
"The traffic of terrorists, I can assure you, is more on this side, coming from Iraq than going from us to Iraq," he said. "This is one of the worries our government has."
At the same news conference, Rice acknowledged differences on approaches to regional policy but insisted the U.S. and Saudi Arabia remain close and are working to the same goals.
