BACKGROUND ON THE NEWS
As King Abdullah travels in the region for discussions with leaders in Egypt, Syria, Lebanon and Jordan on Arab unity, Middle East peace, Lebanon’s stability and Iran we present comments from the U.S. State Department concerning his efforts.
State Department Press Briefing – July 28
QUESTION: P.J., on Friday, President Assad of Syria and Saudi King Abdullah are going to visit Lebanon and to hold a summit with the Lebanese president. How do you view this joint visit?
MR. CROWLEY: Well, I’ll leave it to the countries involved to characterize a meeting should it take place. Obviously, King Abdullah has played a significant leadership role in the region. So his prospective travel to Syria and to Lebanon is consistent with his search for peace, his promotion of the Arab Peace Initiative, and I would suspect also reflects his concern about other regional security developments, including his concerns – his well-known concerns about Iran. So I would – we certainly value King Abdullah’s leadership in the region and certainly would support his having conversations with a country like Syria and hoping that Syria would respond and play a more constructive role in the region.
State Department Press Briefing – July 29
MR. CROWLEY: ..We certainly, as we talked about yesterday, value dialogue among key leaders in the region. Certainly, King Abdullah, through the Arab Peace Initiative, has put on the table constructive and concrete plans to help move the region towards the kind of peace and stability that everyone should have. I would suspect that the current state of play and efforts towards Middle East peace will be part of their conversation. I certainly would expect that they’ll look at the region more broadly, including the concern that they have about Iran. So I would expect that’ll be part of a conversation, but I’ll leave it to the leaders to describe what their goals are.
Source: U.S. State Department
