Monday, April 25, 2005

Saudi slippage?

President Bush on Monday said he would tell Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah that high oil prices will damage the markets and that he wanted to talk about Saudi oil capacity.

"The crown prince understands that it is very important to make sure that prices are reasonable. High oil prices will damage markets," Bush told reporters before welcoming the Saudi leader at his Texas ranch.

  Reuters article

Wait a minute - I thought we had all that settled. Bush has to ask again?

Maybe the tide is shifting in Saudi Arabia?

Candidates on a "golden list" backed by conservative clerics swept the final stage of Saudi Arabia's landmark municipal elections, according to results announced Saturday.

The victories further the already strong showing of Islamists in the kingdom's tentative experiment with democracy.

[...]

Whether the results were an indication of popular support or the result of rule-bending clerical involvement, the Saudi monarchy will now need to decide how much influence to permit the Islamists.

  CNN article

The CNN article implies that this was actually an attempt to defuse Islamic militant sentiments by allowing some of them in on the game, at least in appearance. If so, I bet it won't work. At least I'm guessing that Islamic militants are not to be fooled by appearance.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Comments are moderated. There may be some delay before your comment is published. It all depends on how much time M has in the day. But please comment!