WASHINGTON • The US House of Representatives has voted to deny all aid to Saudi Arabia, despite repeated assurances by the Bush administration that the desert kingdom is cooperating in its "war on terror."
The ban is contained in a little-publicised amendment quietly slipped by a bipartisan group of lawmakers into a 34.2-billion-dollar bill that finances US foreign operations in the 2008 fiscal year. The massive bill, featuring a wide range of humanitarian programs, was approved by lawmakers in the middle of the night on Friday.
Similar measures on aid to Saudi Arabia have been passed before by the House. But the current one goes a step further by closing a legislative loophole that in the past had allowed the administration of President George W Bush to waive these bans by invoking requirements of its war on terror.
The amendment, championed by New York Democratic representative Anthony Weiner, a strong supporter of Israel, states that "none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available" by the foreign operations bill "shall be obligated or expended to finance any assistance to Saudi Arabia" or "used to execute a waiver."
While oil-rich Saudi Arabia has never been a large recipient of US aid, the Bush administration channeled a total of more than 2.5m dollars to the kingdom in fiscal 2005 and 2006 as part of their partnership in the war on terror, congressional officials said. Mohammed al-Zulfa of Saudi Arabia's consultative Shura Council said the US action "represents one method out of several that the US Congress has used to pressure the Saudi government into carrying out reforms, whether in the fields of human rights or religious freedom."
"The US Congress and other US organisations are mistaken if they think this method has any value," he told AFP. The Shura Council is a 120-strong consultative body that has no legislative authority. Its recommendations are referred to the king and must be approved by the government.
US administration officials have not publicly commented on the vote. The amendment's sponsors are particularly upset by what they described as Saudi Arabia's support for the anti-Israeli Palestinian group Hamas, which has seized control of the Gaza Strip. In a media fact sheet, the lawmakers said that Hamas received more than half of its financing from Saudi Arabia, and last May alone the Saudi government planned to send 300m dollars to the group.
Weiner said that Riyadh was in fact actively working against US interests. "By cutting off aid and closing the loophole we send a clear message to the Saudi Arabian government that they must be a true ally in advancing peace in the Middle East," the congressman said. The sponsors of the measure also accused the Saudi government of undermining US military efforts in Iraq by making "no official move" to stop about 3,000 Saudis allegedly fighting US troops in the country.
