WASHINGTON, March 22 (KUNA) -- U.S. President Barack Obama will travel to Saudi Arabia on March 28 where he will have in Riyadh a bilateral meeting with the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al-Saud.
U.S. Deputy National Security Advisor for Strategic Communications Ben Rhodes said during a briefing that Obama's meeting with the Saudi King is "an important opportunity to invest in one of our most important relationships in the Middle East, certainly in the Gulf region, to address I think a very broad agenda in terms of our ongoing support for Gulf security, our support for the Syrian opposition where we've been very coordinated with the Saudis, the ongoing Middle East peace discussions, as well as both the nuclear negotiations with Iran but also our joint concern for destabilizing actions that Iran is taking across the region." Obama will be spending the night in Saudi Arabia next Friday then returning back to the United States on Saturday.
For her part, National Security Advisor Susan Rice affirmed "by investing and deepening our core Gulf partnerships, the United States will be in a stronger position to make progress on these very core projects that are central to the President's second term agenda." She said that the meeting that Obama looks forward to having with the King of Saudi Arabia will cover a broad range of issues, "in the first instance, our very important bilateral relationship and the strength of our cooperation and security, economic issues, counterterrorism regional issues as well." Rice affirmed "this partnership is longstanding, is very important to both of our countries, and this will be an opportunity to affirm that and to find opportunities to strengthen it and deepen it." She added "on the regional agenda, of course, Syria will be a topic of conversation. So will Iran and the nuclear negotiations, and the United States' determination above and beyond the nuclear issue that we have security interests and security commitments to our partners in the region that we will stand by and maintain." She expects the two leaders to also discuss "the situation in Egypt and the Middle East peace process." (end) si.rk KUNA 220917 Mar 14NNNN