[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]U[/dropcap]nited States President Barack Obama landed in what’s being billed as an attempt to stop wars in Yemen and Syria and ease tensions between Washington and Riyadh. Obama will meet King Salman and will also attend a summit on Thursday with leaders of six Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) states, at which he’ll be joined by US Defense Secretary Ashton Carter and Secretary of State John Kerry.
The US-Saudi relationship is badly stressed by a deal between Iran and Western countries to curtail its nuclear programme, a move that its friends and Riyadh worried would embolden Teheran in the area.
“We stressed when Iran wants to have normal relations with GCC states it must alter its policies and to abide by the great locality principle and to refrain from intervening in the matters of GCC states and the nations of the area,” the Saudi Foreign Minister Adel Al-Jubeir said previously this month.
It is expected that President Obama will also be talking to the Saudis about the release of the missing 28 pages from the 9/11 Congressional Report, which has been suppressed until now. According to the New York Post, case agents who worked on this say that the pages missing in the 9/11 congressional inquiry report — which consist of the whole closing chapter dealing with “foreign support for the September 11 hijackers” — details “incontrovertible signs” collected from both CIA and FBI case files of official Saudi aid for at least two of the Saudi hijackers who settled in San Diego.
[dropcap color=”#008040″ boxed=”yes” boxed_radius=”8px” class=”” id=””]S[/dropcap]ome info has leaked in the redacted section, including a flurry of pre-9/11 phone calls between one of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego and the Saudi Embassy, and the transport of some $130,000 from then-Saudi Ambassador Prince Bandar’s family checking account to yet another of the hijackers’ Saudi handlers in San Diego.
A researcher who worked in Washington with the Joint Terrorism Task Forces (JTTF) complained that instead of investigating Bandar, the US government shielded him. He said the State Department assigned a security detail to help secure Bandar not only at the embassy, but also at his McLean, Va., mansion.
It is interesting to note that some Saudis, including Prince Bandar, want to have the missing 28 pages released. Back in 2003, then–Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan said that “Saudi Arabia has nothing to hide” and the redacted allegations “could not be substantiated.”
If these missing 28 pages are going to be released to the general public, then there is a good chance that President Obama will be giving a “heads up” to the Saudis.
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