Asma Alsharif
Reuters
JEDDAH: Saudi Arabia’s elderly King Abdullah will leave for the United States Monday for medical checks for a back ailment, and Crown Prince Sultan returned from holiday abroad, state media and official sources said Sunday.
Western diplomats in Riyadh said the prince’s return indicated the kingdom, the which has no political parties or elected Parliament, is trying to prevent a power vacuum and reassure Washington and other allies.
A day before his departure, the king reappointed several officials close to his reform course, including Saudi Arabia’s relatively moderate top Islamic scholar and the ambassador to Washington.
Saudi Health Minister Abdullah al-Rabeeah made a rare television appearance Sunday to assure the public the king was healthy and would return to lead.
Prominent journalist Jamal Khashoggi said the fourth medical bulletin in little more than a week showed the desert kingdom, known for its secrecy, wanted to dispel any rumors.
“They want to make a point that there is no room for rumors … Everybody should know that we do have a system to resolve all unexpected situations,” he added, noting an allegiance council set up by Abdullah to regulate the succession.
However, the princes at the top of the hierarchy are all in their 70s and 80s and the Al-Saud family, which founded the kingdom with clerics in 1932, will remain a gerontocracy unless it soon promotes younger princes.
The king is thought to be 86 or 87 and Sultan is only a few years younger. Many technocrat ministers such as Oil Minister Ali al-Naimi are in their 70s.
Abdullah, valued by Washington as a moderate, went into hospital Friday after a blood clot complicated a slipped disc suffered the week before.
“The king will leave on Monday for the United States to complete medical tests,” the Saudi Press Agency SPA said.
Health minister Rabeeah said the king “is healthy and will return to lead this proud nation.” But diplomats say there has been uncertainty about his health since he cancelled a trip to France in July.
Crown Prince Sultan, who has had unspecified health problems over the past two years, returned to Riyadh on Sunday evening from Morocco, where he had been since August.
Saudi officials say Sultan, who is also defense minister, has been working normally since returning in December from an extended medical absence. Diplomats say he was treated for cancer and has been much less active in public since.
Listen to the Article 
Printable Version 
Send to a friend 
