Following his candor at the National Council on US-Arab Relations’ Policymakers Conference in Washington, our partner site SUSRIS features an exclusive interview with Prince Turki al Faisal.
In this wide-ranging interview Prince Turki discusses Saudi Arabia’s decision to turn down a seat at the United Nations Security Council:
“It’s been a long time for us beating at the door of the Security Council and the United Nations on the issues that were mentioned in the Foreign Ministry’s statement, nuclear non-proliferation, Palestine, and Syria. So as I said it’s not a whimsical decision. We are a very patient people and we take a long time to mull things through. But when we do we like to act quickly.
This presented an opportunity, as I said in my presentation, for the Kingdom to say to the rest of the world you have to do something about the state of the United Nations Security Council. It’s not good enough that statements are issued or to be sitting at the Security Council constantly repeating ones self in the face of what is inevitably a council that is ineffective and that is not in any case going to do what Saudi Arabia would like it to do.”
The SUSRIS interview with Prince Turki comes at a sensitive time for the U.S.-Saudi diplomatic relationship. On Monday, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, Saudi Arabia’s Intelligence Head, told European diplomats that he “plans to scale back cooperating with the U.S. to arm and train Syrian rebels in protest of Washington’s policy in the region,” according to a report by Ellen Knickmeyer in the Wall Street Journal. Following that report, and Prince Turki’s remarks in Washington on Tuesday, media speculation reached a fever pitch about the future of the U.S.-Saudi so-called “Special Relationship.”
