Saudi Arabia on Monday announced that Adel al-Jubeir, an advisor to King Abdullah, has been named as its new ambassador to the United States, the oil-rich kingdom's top diplomatic posting.
Jubeir, also a former spokesman at the embassy in Washington, replaces Prince Turki al-Faisal who resigned abruptly in December for what he said were family reasons. The appointment was announced by royal decree on Monday.
"In accordance with a request from Prince Turki al-Faisal bin Abdul Aziz... to be discharged from his duties and in accordance with a proposal from the foreign minister, we have ordered the nomination of Adel bin Ahmed al-Jubeir as ambassador to the United States with the rank of minister," said the decree, reported by the official news agency SPA.
Jubeir, a diplomat fluent in English, French and German, is close to Prince Turki's predecessor, Prince Bandar bin Sultan who occupied the post for 20 years until July, 2005.
The Washington Post had said last year that Prince Turki had been increasingly rumoured as a possible replacement for his brother, Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, who it said was in fragile health.
When Prince Turki flew home after only 15 months in the crucial diplomatic post, a source at the Saudi embassy said he had left after telling staff he was quitting because he wanted to spend more time with his family.
Oil-rich Saudi Arabia is regarded as a close regional ally of the United States, although differences have emerged over Washington's policy in violence-wracked Iraq.
Prince Turki made a series of speeches last year urging Washington not to withdraw its troops from Iraq precipitously, and repeatedly urged the White House to try to break the deadlock in Israeli-Palestinian peace talks. Before taking up the Washington job in 2005, he spent nearly three years as ambassador in Britain.
He also spent 25 years as the head of Saudi Arabia's intelligence service. In the 1980s, after the Soviet Union invaded Afghanistan, Prince Turki worked closely with al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, a Saudi, in organising Muslim volunteers to join the Afghan insurgency. In a November 2001 interview with the Saudi MBC television channel, he confirmed meeting bin Laden several times in Saudi Arabia and Pakistan before 1994.