Saud to Attend Meeting of ME Quartet

RIYADH, 7 May 2006 — Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal will attend the meeting of the Middle East Quartet at the United Nations in New York. The Quartet comprises the United Nations, the European Union, US and Russia.

The meeting will discuss the potentially dangerous stalemate in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, said a spokesman at the Saudi Foreign Ministry.

Osama Nugali, chief of media affairs at the Saudi Foreign Ministry, confirmed the news of Prince Saud’s participation. He said the prince would join US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, UN chief Kofi Annan and Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov at the meeting.

Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, whose country currently holds the rotating presidency of the European Union, will also attend the meeting.

In addition to Prince Saud, the foreign ministers of Egypt and Jordan are also expected to attend, according to a report.

The foreign ministers will push the Quartet to find ways to ensure the flow of funds to the Palestinian Authority. Saudi Arabia has been supporting the new government and asking the international community to extend aid to the Hamas-led government.

The Arab League has offered a plan to deposit donor funds directly into government workers’ accounts, but the US has thwarted the move. The Quartet should find a “more realistic” way of handling funding and not dangle legal threats against aid groups dealing with Hamas, said a report quoting a spokesman at the Saudi Embassy in Washington.

The spokesman said, “We cannot wait for the Palestinian crisis to spiral further down to the point of no return. When you have an angry, unemployed, impoverished population, then democracy, freedom and coexistence go out of the window. It’s survival.”

M. Ghazanfar Ali Khan, Arab News