US President Barack Obama will be in Saudi Arabia on Wednesday to meet the royals.
Win McNamee/ Getty Images
US President Barack Obama will begin his visit to Saudi
Arabia on 20 April amid tensions between the two countries over Justice
Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, a proposed piece of US legislation
that will allow families of the victims of the 9/11 terror attacks to
sue the Saudi government in US courts. The White House has said it will
not back the bill.
Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia have soured for quite some time
owing to certain US policies that did not go down well with the Middle
East. Now the 9/11 congressional legislation threatens to further strain
the relations as Riyadh warns of counter measures.
The bill is yet to be tabled in the Senate, but Riyadh has
already issued a warning that it could sell off its multi-billion dollar
American assets if the legislation comes into force, The Telegraph reported.
A recent New York Times report quoted Saudi foreign minister
Adel al-Jubeir as saying that the country would be forced to get rid of
about $750bn (£524bn) in treasury securities and other assets in the US
before the US courts move to freeze these assets.
The White House
has reportedly said it will veto the bill. "Our concerns about this law
are not related to its impact on our relationship with a particular
country. The concern that we have is simply this: it could put the
United States and our taxpayers and our service members and our
diplomats at significant risk if other countries were to adopt a similar
law," Josh Earnest, White House press secretary, was quoted as saying
by The Telegraph.
The legislation was drafted considering the fact that 15 of the 19
perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks were Saudi citizens, but the kingdom
has not been formally implicated so far. The so-called 20th
hijacker Zacarias Moussaoui had claimed that al-Qaeda received millions
of dollars of donation from the Saudi royal family in the 1990s.
However, the Saudi Embassy had rubbished the claims.
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