WASHINGTON - The appointment of former Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki al-Faisal as ambassador to the United States should be the occasion for Riyadh to clear up its past relations with Islamic extremists and terrorists, the New York Times said Sunday.
Pointing to his former oversight of Saudi Arabia's relationship with Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and Afghan Taliban leader Mullah Muhammad Omar, Prince Turki represents the Saudis' longstanding ambiguous relationship with Islamic extremism, the Times said in an editorial.
"His appointment should stimulate serious discussion of the darker aspects of Saudi Arabia's historic relations with the world of Islamic extremists and terrorists," the newspaper said.
Turki was intelligence chief for 27 years until 2001, when he became ambassador to Great Britain.
He was recently named to replace retiring Prince Bandar bin Sultan, who was Riyadh's top diplomat in Washington for more than two decades.
While stressing that Turki is "neither a terrorist nor a religious zealot", the Times said he was closely connected to Saudi Arabia's decades of aggressive Islamic diplomacy, some of which eventually spawned militant extremist groups like Al-Qaeda and the Taliban.
"As head of Saudi intelligence from 1977 until August 31, 2001, he personally managed Riyadh's relations with Osama bin Laden and Mullah Muhammad Omar of the Taliban," the Times said.
"Anyone else who had dealings with even a small fraction of the notorious characters the prince has worked with over the years would never make it past the immigration counter at Washington's Dulles Airport," the paper said.
"Prince Turki could actually turn out to be a good choice for Saudi Arabia's most important diplomatic post. He is intimately familiar with the essential issues, extremely well connected at home and generally on the right side of Riyadh's internal debate over political reform," the Times said.
However, the newspaper noted, Turki was for decades at the center of a regime "where politics means the royal court, justice means the lash and the sword, financial accountability means apportioning oil revenues among high-living princes and women's rights mean nothing at all."
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