It seems that everyone wants something from Saudi Arabia.
Before becoming the President of Egypt, Mohammed Morsi wanted visas to take his family on a religious pilgrimage. A Lebanese politician begged for cash to pay his bodyguards. Even the state news agency of Guinea, in West Africa, asked for $2,000 “to solve many of the problems the agency is facing.”
They all had good reason to ask, as the kingdom has long wielded its oil wealth and religious influence to try to shape regional events and support figures sympathetic to its worldview.
WikiLeaks documents These and other revelations appear in a trove of documents said to have come from inside the Saudi Foreign Affairs Ministry and released on Friday by WikiLeaks.
While the documents appear to contain no shocking revelations about Saudi Arabia, they contain enough detail to shed light on the diplomacy of a deeply private country and to embarrass Saudi officials and those who lobby them for financial aid.
In a statement carried by the Saudi state news agency Saturday, a Foreign Ministry spokesman, Osama Nugali, acknowledged that the documents were related to a recent electronic attack on the ministry. He warned Saudis not to “help the enemies of the homeland” by sharing the documents, adding that many were “clearly fabricated.” Those who distribute the documents will be punished under the country’s cybercrimes law, he said.
Clear in many of the documents are efforts by Saudi Arabia, a Sunni power, to combat the influence of Shia Iran, its regional rival, as well as Iranian proxies like Hizbollah, the Lebanese Shia militant group and political party.
Cables about Iraq suggest efforts to support politicians who opposed Nouri al-Maliki, then the Shia Prime Minister of Iraq, who was close to Iran.
Other cables show Saudi Arabia working to maintain its regional influence. One accused Qatar, another Persian Gulf state known for oil wealth and cash-based diplomacy, of stirring up trouble in Yemen, Saudi Arabia’s southern neighbour, by backing a rich politician to the tune of $250 million.
And a few cables implied that Saudi leaders had negotiated with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt after the revolution that ousted President Hosni Mubarak, a long-time Saudi ally.
Missing from the documents is any evidence of direct Saudi support for militant groups in Syria or elsewhere. — New York Times News Service
