Saudi Arabian authorities tread warily towards the future

Saudi Arabia, key U.S. ally in the Arab world, is one of the last old-style autocracies. How long can "The Kingdom" remain that way? In this sequel to the two-part series already published, AP Special Correspondent Charles J. Hanley looks into the question.

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP): The 456 plush seats in the Majlis al-Shura spread out over a half-acre (0.2 hectare) of deep carpet, under a glittering ceiling of arabesque blue, beneath a dome larger than St. Peter's in Rome.

It is a majestic setting for a parliament enacting the laws of the land. But no one meets here.

The Majlis that does meet is a 61-member body that assembles, little-noticed, in a smaller room near the empty grand chamber. It passes no legislation. It has no power.

When inaugurated in 1993, this Majlis al-Shura, or Consultative Council, was portrayed as a step toward Saudi political modernization. "Evolution is the way of the world," Majlis leader Sheik Mohammed bin Jubair tells a visitor to his architectural showpiece. "Stagnation leads to death."

But as a body whose members are all appointed by King Fahd, whose agenda is set by the king and whose advisory reports can be ignored by him, the Majlis does little to quiet Saudi voices of opposition.

"We want people's representation, full accountability, freedom of expression and assembly," dissident-in-exile Saad Al-Faqih said in an interview in London. Otherwise "there will be a bad scenario, violence followed by violence."

The scenario-writers are hard at work over Saudi Arabia these days, weighing risks, assessing the opposition. Many disagree with Al-Faqih.

"We see a country that looks still remarkably stable," said a ranking Pentagon official.

That's a dominant Washington view. But other American officials, in private conversations, betray some nervousness. Violence, after all, has already occurred, and the line looks thin between evolution and stagnation. "The situation is vulnerable," said a senior State Department official.

The Americans look vulnerable, too, caught in the middle. They aren't alone. Any upheaval here, in the world's No. 1 oil- exporting country, could affect the entire global economy.

Ripples of dissent began with the 1990-91 Gulf War, when the U.S. military threw down a "Desert Shield" between the oil kingdom and an aggressive Iraq.

Many Saudis were angry that the billions in armaments the monarchy had bought could not defend them, and resented the army of "unbelieving" Americans dropped into their midst. Fundamentalist clergymen later appealed to King Fahd to never rely again on "atheist" troops, and for a greater role for the Islamic clergy in government.

Tapes of clerics' anti-government sermons soon circulated. When physicist Mohammed Al-Masari founded a dissident group in Riyadh in 1993, he was quickly arrested. A year later, two leading anti-government clerics were also locked up. Then the bloodshed began.

Terrorist bombs in 1995 and last June killed 24 Americans at two U.S. military sites. Saudi officials suggest an Iranian link, but the local connection is clear: Four young men executed for the first attack were from the Saudi heartland.

"Saudis view the American presence at best ambiguously, and at worst as a provocation," said a former high-ranking U.S. diplomat who worked in Saudi Arabia and agreed to discuss the sensitive relationship on condition he not be quoted by name.

"There is a division between the government - that is, the royal family -- and the man in the street."

Those ordinary Saudis are the target of a flood of faxes the dissidents send from abroad. "Come to the holy war, to a confrontation with the United States!" Al-Masari, now in exile in London, declared in one.

Although the faxes are fiery, the "fax revolution" may be sputtering.

Al-Faqih has split with Al-Masari and formed his own group. Al-Masari, meanwhile, is hobbled by debt. Saudi multimillionaire and anti-regime militant Osama bin Laden, reputed bankroller of international Islamic extremists, fires off his own anti-U.S. messages. But he is in remote exile in Afghanistan.

The groups vary in militancy and seem poorly coordinated. No charismatic leader has emerged. Despite claims they are the "tip of an iceberg," no widespread anti-government activity has surfaced inside the tightly controlled country.

Even the opposition acknowledges it is in a building stage.

"It's a time for educating people," said Khaled Al-Fauwaz, a bin Laden associate in London.

While the dissidents build, the ruling House of Saud may need to rebuild.

Public opinion is hard to gauge in a country where phone lines are assumed tapped, restaurant conversations must be guarded, and the press sticks to the government line. But local journalists, speaking privately, say ordinary Saudis sound increasingly fed up with the ostentatious living of the Sauds.

Those habits are not new, but the proliferation of Saud princes -- some estimate they now number 5,000 -- adds to the burden on a society whose royals siphon off billions in oil revenue before it reaches the treasury.

Their internal rivalries could also weaken the Sauds.

After King Fahd, in his mid-70s, suffered a reported stroke in late 1995, he temporarily handed power to half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah. But he soon took it back -- at the behest, diplomats say, of his full brothers, led by Defense Minister Prince Sultan, who resented Abdullah's interference in their government business.

Even if these aging sons of founding father King Abdel Aziz paper over their differences, the nation faces a revolving door of elderly princes, tied to the old ways, as successors to Fahd.

Some Sauds apparently favor new ways, and look to an old friend for help. "Senior Saudis asked us to put pressure on their family to clean up their act," a knowledgeable American source said. "We haven't done anything."

Saudi political scientist Abdel-Aziz Al-Fayez, a member of the new Majlis, said pressing for Western-style democracy would be pointless.

"I don't see the demand," he said. "In this part of the world people want stability. And this country is stable."

"Stability" may not include the sight of elected representatives in the grand, unused Majlis chamber, built during a spell of liberalization talk in the 1980s. But stability does include the benefits of an oil-fed welfare state: free health services, transportation subsidies, interest-free housing loans, no taxes.

A slumping oil market had threatened those benefits, but a recent rebound in prices saved them from deep cuts. Now new trouble looms.

The one-industry economy is producing too few new jobs for a population of 17 million, growing at 3.5 percent a year. Without work, dispirited university graduates are believed turning to the anti-government message of ultra-conservative Islamic preachers.

Their American advisers are pressing the Saudis to diversify the economy. The index to stability, meanwhile, will lie not in the bitterness of faxes from London, but in the spot price of sweet crude pumped from beneath Saudi sands.

Sheik Mohammed bin Jubair has heard about elections in other countries and is unimpressed.

"There are 56 million voters in Pakistan, and only 14 million voted. Who speaks for the silent majority?" asked the chairman of the unelected Majlis al-Shura, the closest thing Saudi Arabia has to a national assembly.

Besides, Jubair said, elections risk giving you the wrong kind of leaders.

They are not a lawmaking body, the chairman explained, since all law is already found in the Sharia, Muslim legal tradition. "Legislation in Islam stopped 1,400 years ago," he said.