An article in The Washington Post, written by Foreign Affairs Editor Glenn Kessler, said that President George W. Bush has begun his first high-profile trip to the Middle East, in an effort to promote the peace process. The paper said that one leader in the Middle East region who has earned Bush’s trust and respect is Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah, who introduced the Palestinian issue openly and frankly to President Bush when they met last year.
According to the report, President Bush aides said that Crown Prince Abdullah earned Bush’s respect by “forcefully challenging the President over his handling of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict,” during a visit to the President’s Texas ranch in April last year. One senior Bush official described the meeting with the Crown Prince as “a near-death experience” for the President. He said that Prince Abdullah came to the ranch holding a book showing pictures of the suffering of Palestinians, and a ten-minute video of “children shot and crushed by Israelis”. The official said that Prince Abdullah spoke eloquently about what these images meant, “conveying a respect for human life rather than a hatred of Israel,” and then asked Bush whether he was going to do anything about the situation or not.
“Current and former U.S. officials said that Prince Abdullah put it this way: I will work with you if you are willing to deal with this issue; if you can’t, let me know now. No matter what happens, I will always say positive things about you in public. But I have to make certain calculations on my own if you aren’t going to confront this issue,” the report said. President Bush replied that he was working on a vision and would present it soon. “It certainly had an impact on the President,” one official said: “Few leaders had ever spoken so frankly and directly to him.”
The report said: “The President, the official said, concluded that Prince Abdullah was a good person, who has a vision of what progress and prosperity he wants his country to achieve. Since then, the President frequently asks his aides whether Prince Abdullah believes that Bush is living up to the commitments he made during the meeting.”
Source: SPA
