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Palestinian Intifada Brings Iran And Saudi Together
JEDDAH, Saudi Arabia, May 12 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Relations between two heavyweight Muslim countries improved Saturday as foreign ministers from Shiite Muslim Iran and Sunni Muslim Saudi Arabia met in Jeddah to discuss issues surrounding the eight-month old Palestinian uprising against Israel in the Occupied Palestinian territories.
Iranian Foreign Minister Kamal Kharazi held talks with his Saudi counterpart, Prince Saud al-Faisal, on his first visit to the kingdom since the two countries signed a security pact last month.
The ministers went straight into a meeting after Kharazi's arrival in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah in which they reviewed "bilateral relations and developments on the Arab and Islamic fronts," the official Saudi news agency SPA reported.
The Iranian news agency IRNA said Kharazi's talks with the Saudi leadership would cover "the latest developments in Palestine as well as ways to support the Muslim Palestinian people."
The visit is the first by any senior Iranian official since the two Gulf powers signed an April 17th security pact in Tehran to fight drug trafficking and terrorism. The pact included measures on border surveillance and policing, but fell short of military co-operation.
Tehran and Riyadh severed relations in 1988, a year after Iranian Muslim Hajj pilgrims in Mecca clashed with Saudi police during an anti-U.S. protest that left more than 400 dead.
On Wednesday, the Iranian foreign ministry rejected U.S. charges of involvement in a 1996 bombing in Khobar, Saudi Arabia, that killed 19 U.S. servicemen and injured another 500.
Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) director Louis Freeh reportedly gave U.S. administration officials a list of people he thinks should be indicted for the attack, according to The New Yorker magazine.
But Iranian foreign ministry spokesman Hamid-Reza Asefi said: "These baseless comments were put out by people worried because of the warming in relations between Iran and Saudi Arabia," as exemplified by the security pact.
Ties between the Saudi kingdom and non-Arab Iran began deteriorating after the 1979 revolution, which brought the Islamic clergy to power in Tehran. But they have warmed since the 1997 election of Mohammad Khatami as Iran's president.
Exemplifying the warmed relations between the two since he came to power, Khatami made a historic visit to Saudi Arabia in 1999.
The BBC's online service said Saudi Arabia used to be extremely wary of Iran's stated policy of exporting its Islamic revolution.
Tehran is known to want to sign defense pacts with its Gulf neighbors, but co-operation is difficult because it opposes the deployment of U.S. and Western forces in the region.
But both Iran, a predominantly Shiite Muslim country, and its Arab Sunni Muslim neighbors, have been in agreement on the condemnation of the use of excessive force by Israel towards Palestinian demonstrators protesting Israeli occupation of holy Muslim sites.
It has not been made clear if the two countries reached an agreement over providing aid to the Palestinians, but their meeting over the issue was likely to give moral support to the Palestinians who have been decrying lack of support from Arab and Muslim nations.
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