 |
| Most
Arabs and Muslims have waged a grass-roots campaign to boycott
U.S. products in protest at flagrant U.S. bias for Israel
against the Palestinians.
|
RIYADH,
July 4 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Economic ties between the
United States and Saudi Arabia, Washington's major Arab trading
partner, have slowed considerably in the past year over the September
11 attacks and perceived U.S. bias for Israel, official figures show.
Trade,
particularly imports from the United States, has declined steeply, and
travel from Saudi Arabia to America's favorite tourist attractions has
plummeted to unprecedented low levels, Agence France-Presse (AFP)
reported.
U.S. exports to the oil-rich
kingdom in the first four months of 2002 dropped by about 43 percent
to 1.3 billion dollars from 2.3 billion in the same period last year,
according to official U.S. statistics.
Saudi exports to its major
international ally through April this year also dropped by some 28
percent to 3.5 billion dollars from last year's 4.9 billion.
Oil and crude products make up
more than 95 percent of Saudi exports to the United States.
Figures released by the U.S.
embassy in Riyadh show that the number of Saudis traveling to the
United States dropped by 10 percent for business trips and as much as
40 percent for families.
But travel industry sources
told AFP the figure was much higher.
Last year, 52,000 Saudis
traveled to the United States, spending about 400 million dollars.
Visa applications at the U.S.
embassy and consulates dropped by more than half this year, with the
number of applicants until the end of April making up just 46 percent
of the figure for the first four months of 2001.
In a bid to encourage Saudis
to visit the United States, a group of travel agents and airline
representatives formed a "Visit U.S.A. Committee" with the
support of the American embassy.
U.S. Ambassador Robert Jordan
earlier this week inaugurated a website for the committee, which
groups the kingdom's major travel agencies and airlines operating from
Saudi airports.
Committee head Tariq Jaffrey
said that due to the bad travel season to the United States and
Europe, Saudi Arabian Airlines had cut flights to U.S. destinations by
half and along with other carriers maintained winter promotion fares.
The U.S. trade volume with
Saudi Arabia has been on the decline since the September 11 attacks in
the United States, which Washington has blamed on Saudi-born dissident
Osama bin Laden, but the drop was sharper after Israel launched its
deadly military offensives in the West Bank late March.
Saudis, like most Arabs and
Muslims, waged a grass-roots campaign to boycott U.S. products in
protest at Washington's blind backing for Israel against the
Palestinians.
Sales
of U.S. consumer products, fast-food chains and even vehicles were
affected.
Official U.S. figures show
that exports of beverages and tobacco to Saudi Arabia at the height of
the Israeli aggression in April dropped by 96 percent to 1.1 million
dollars from last April's 26 million dollars, and by 93 percent from
the previous month.
Many of the U.S. fast-food
chains were hit hard in the past few months, forcing them to make
unprecedented promotions telling customers that the products they use
are 100 percent Arab and Saudi.
Saudi Arabia is the second
largest importer from the United States after Israel, with some six
billion dollars worth of goods in 2001, and is the top exporter to
Washington with 13.2 billion dollars in the same year, according to
U.S. embassy figures.
