"My fears are much more eased," Saud al-Faisal said recently following meetings with the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. Before Iraqi voters passed a new constitution last month, Saud al-Faisal had told U.S. reporters he worried that sectarian disputes complicated by the U.S. presence in Iraq were pulling the country towards a civil war.

Saudi Arabia is working towards distributing the reconstruction money promised earlier in 2005, but unfortunately to this day they have given no date for it. The US has reprimanded the Arab states for not doing enough to support post-Saddam Iraq and for being reluctant to open their embassies in there. Condoleezza Rice said that she wanted Saudi Arabia to do more to root out the sources of financing for anti american organisations, but said that America and Saudi were working together well.

She said "The reason that countries or leaders are fighting terrorism is not to please the United States," but "It's because their own people are dying ... because their own region is suffering a sense of instability." She also renewed her criticism of Syria for dragging its feet in cooperating with a U.N. investigation into the killing of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik Hariri in Beirut last February. Hariri was trying to pull his country away from Syrian domination, and his death launched street protests against Syria's three-decade political and military control in Lebanon. Yet despite Syria's complaints about the probe and its plans to perform its own investigation. She chose to ignore these and renew her own criticism saying "We have to say the Syrians have not yet cooperated," Bush, inviting Saudi King Abdullah to his Crawford, Texas, ranch for a chummy visit last spring.

The two leaders agreed then to set up a high-level committee, headed by Condeleezza Rice and Saud al-Faisal, to deal with strategic issues. Saudi Arabia believed it was being unjustly blamed for the actions of Osama bin Laden. And in order to improve its image in the eyes of the west, Saud al-faisal in a recent ABC television interview he also said the Kingdom would expand the rights of its women citizens, eventually allowing them to drive cars... About time too!