On the Mind of Saud al-Faisal

I spent Thanksgiving weekend, after a traditional Turkey dinner with family and friends at home, following the road to Annapolis. Last night in Paris, I spent an hour talking with the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, catching up with him after the Arab foreign ministers' meeting in Cairo and just before he left for the peace conference. It is certainly worth knowing what's on his mind. His country sponsored the 2002 Arab peace initiative, a landmark offer of full peace with Israel in exchange for Israel's withdrawal from Arab territories. That is doubly significant, considering that Saudi Arabia has no occupied lands itself, is the custodian of Islam's holiest places, and possesses the world's largest petroleum reserves. Saud, one of the longest serving foreign ministers in the diplomatic business, is the son of a Saudi king who fought with his grandfather Ibn Saud in the 1920s in founding the modern Saudi state. He will be the highest-ranking Saudi ever to attend a peace conference with Israelis.

Saud was in surprisingly good spirits. It had been a long week but I didn't see any sign of the back problems that often bring him a lot of distress. Not that he isn't usually the consummate diplomat. I arrived 20 minutes early for our rendezvous and, dressed in a smart business suit rather than Saudi attire, he immediately began the interview. There's been a lot of political gossip about the Saudis straddling the fence about going to Annapolis, but Saud made it clear that they always intended to go, so long as the conference didn't become an embarrassing joke. We didn't discuss it last night, but the Saudis have been very wary of what they perceive as an Israeli effort to make political capital out of meeting the Saudis without having any intention of using the connection to help make peace.

That's probably one of the reasons he was gruff on the subject of shaking Ehud Olmert's hand in Annapolis. To most people, including me, that seems unnecessarily impolite. Whatever Olmert might get out of it, it would certainly help convince a skeptical Israeli public that the Arabs truly want peace. Despite his gracious manner, however, Saud plays hardball. He thinks the Saudi-sponsored Arab peace plan of 2002, which the Israelis ignored for five years, speaks for itself. One hopes that the Annapolis conference doesn't degenerate into one-upsmanship speechmaking, as the 1991 Madrid conference did to a certain extent. But by using the reference to the German humiliation at the Versailles peace conference, Saud signaled that the Arabs have little patience for any dancing around the issue of occupation. He couldn't have been clearer or more blunt: "Either Israel wants peace or territory. It can't have both."

It didn't make it into the published interview, but at one point I asked Saud if he was concerned that Olmert and Abbas were too weak politically to make a deal, whatever good intentions they may or may not have. He focused only on Olmert, showing some exasperation with the issue. "We have always been faced with the question, either Israel has a strong government that doesn't want peace, or a weak government that can't make peace. I hope we have moved away from that. If he is weak, let him be strong with peace. Not strong with a position for conflict and further wars."

What's clear from that and other things he said is that the Saudis are putting all their hopes and expectations on the Bush administration eventually cajoling, persuading or pressuring the Israelis into making the significant moves that the Arabs are demanding in exchange for the Arab peace plan's promise of full normalization with the Arab world. Saud expressed optimism about the conference, saying the Arabs were pleased that the parties had agreed to seek a comprehensive rather than piecemeal peace, and were impressed by Condi Rice's promise of full U.S. engagement in the peace process after a six-year hiatus in U.S. mediation efforts. Clearly Saud is less sure about what happens after Annapolis. His comments reinforced my belief that Annapolis is a significant step towards peace and that the stakes have never been higher.

Check out my pre-conference analysis of Annapolis here.

--By Scott MacLeod/Paris