Gates, Rice to reaffirm US commitment to Mideast in visit

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and Defense Secretary Robert Gates will assure Arab states next week of US commitment to the region whatever happens in Iraq, senior US officials said yesterday.

But in their rare joint visits to Egypt and Saudi Arabia, Rice and Gates also will press Arab allies to back Sunni moderates in Iraq and constructively engage the Shiite-led government in Baghdad, they said.

The visit comes amid reports of growing friction between Washington and its Saudi ally over whether Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki can be trusted or is too close to Iran.

The New York Times reported that the Saudis recently confronted a US envoy with documents that purported to show Maliki warning radical Shiite cleric Moqtada Sadr to lie low during the US "surge" offensive, and another that the prime minister was an agent of Iran.

US Ambassador Zalmay Khalilzad rejected the documents as forgeries, however, and US officials are angry over what they see as a counter-productive role by the Saudis, including evidence of Saudi funding for Maliki's opponents, the Times said.

Two senior officials who briefed reporters denied knowlege of the reported Saudi documents, and portrayed Saudi Arabia as a crucial ally with which Washington sometimes had differences.

"It's a spurious issue," a senior State Department official said of the documents.

He also said he was not aware of Saudi funding for insurgents in Iraq.

But the official said the United States strongly believes that Iraq's emergence under a "democratic, demographically based government" was in the region's interest.

"The role of the Sunni Arab neighbors is to send a positive, affirmative message to moderates in Iraq in government that the neighbors are with you," the official said. "And a message to those engaged in violence from the Sunni community that this violence is killing your future."

Asked whether the secretaries will raise concerns about Saudis going to Iraq as foreign fighters, the State Department official shifted the blame to Syria through which an estimated 70 percent of the foreign fighters transit.

But he said all the states in the region needed to strengthen border controls, particularly at airports, to stem the movement of fighters and suicide bombers to Syria.

"I'm fairly certain that the subject of foreign fighters will be raised with all our interlocutors on this trip," said a senior defense official.

The defense official said the secretaries will discuss long US term strategy in the region during their visits, including US concerns about a changing strategic threat from Iran.

She said the United States is readying a major arms package for the Saudis and that Gates will discuss with them "what the administration is willing to go forwards with (and) ... what we would recommend to the Hill and others."

US allies in the Gulf are "very concerned about what our commitment and the possibility of withdrawal from Iraq means for the region," she said.

Gates will reasure them that "regardless of what happens in the near term in Iraq that our commitment in the region remains firm, remains steadfast and that in fact we are looking to enhance and develop it."

"The withdrawal of whatever troops, at whatever time from Iraq is important, but it is also something that in a decade or in a hundred years needs to be viewed in context.

"And what our secretaries will be talking about is how do we deal with short term decision-making with long-term strategic threats in the region, and putting Iraq quite frankly in context," she said.