SAUDI ARABIA DENIES KING SAID “IRAN AND ISRAEL DO NOT DESERVE TO EXIST”
“Saudi Arabia denied reports Friday that King Abdullah had said in private that “two states in the region do not deserve to exist: Israel and Iran.”
** FILE ** President Barack Obama and Saudi Arabia‘s King Abdullah, share a light moment when they met on Tuesday, June 29, 2010, in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington. (AP Photo/Ron Edmonds)
By Benjamin Birnbaum
Saudi Arabia denied reports Friday that King Abdullah had said in private that “two states in the region do not deserve to exist: Israel and Iran.”
“This is untrue altogether,” a Saudi official told the government-controlled Saudi Press Agency.
Georges Malbrunot, a journalist with the French daily Le Figaro, claims the comment was made in a June 5 meeting in Riyadh between the king and French Defense Minister Herve Morin.
Last month, Saudi Arabia also denied a report by the Times of London that the kingdom was making preparations to allow Israel use of its airspace for a strike on Iranian nuclear facilities.
King Abdullah met Tuesday with President Obama in an effort to present a united front on Iran’s nuclear program and the Israeli-Palestinian peace process.
Saudi Arabia does not have formal diplomatic relations with Israel. In 2002 then-Crown Prince Abdullah spearheaded an initiative unanimously endorsed by the 22-member Arab League that promised Israel an end to the Arab-Israeli conflict in return for a “complete withdrawal” from all territories seized in the 1967 Six-Day War and a “just settlement” to the Palestinian refugee issue.
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