The U.S. and Saudi Arabia have a close relationship with a bond “that goes far beyond energy,” Saudi Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi said.
The minister told graduates during his commencement speech at Lehigh University in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, that “We seek together a world of greater understanding, mutual tolerance, and respect for human dignity and personal interdependence.”
Al-Naimi, who said he grew up as a nomadic Bedouin, studied geology and graduated from Lehigh in 1962. The minister said he was one of a very few Saudis who studied in the U.S., when he came to Lehigh in 1959. Now, there are thousands, he said.
