The US House of Representatives has voted to deny all aid to Saudi Arabia, despite repeated assurances by the Bush administration that the desert kingdom was co-operating in its war on terror. The ban is contained in a little-publicised amendment quietly slipped by a bipartisan group of lawmakers into a 34.2-billion-dollar bill financing US foreign operations in fiscal 2008.
The massive bill, featuring a wide range of humanitarian programs, was approved by lawmakers in the middle of the night on Friday. Similar measures on aid to Saudi Arabia have been passed before by the House. But the current one goes a step further by closing a legislative loophole that in the past had allowed the administration of President George W. Bush to waive these bans by invoking requirements of its war on terror.
The amendment, championed by New York Democratic representative Anthony Weiner, a strong supporter of Israel, states that "none of the funds appropriated or otherwise made available" by the foreign operations bill "shall be obligated or expended to finance any assistance to Saudi Arabia" or "used to execute a waiver." While oil-rich Saudi Arabia has never been a large recipient of US aid, the Bush administration channelled a total of more than 2.5 million dollars to the kingdom in fiscal 2005 and 2006 as part of their partnership in the war on terror, congressional officials said.
Neither Saudi diplomats nor administration officials have publicly commented on the vote. However, the sponsors of the amendment made it clear they were particularly upset by what they described as Saudi Arabia's support for the militant Palestinian group Hamas, which refuses to recognise Israel and has just taken control of the Gaza Strip.
In a fact sheet released to the media, the lawmakers pointed out that Hamas was receiving more than half of its financing from Saudi Arabia, and last May alone the Saudi government planned to send 300 million dollars to the Islamist group. Weiner charged that Riyadh was in fact actively working against US interests.