US House speaker gets tour of all-male Saudi council

[Arthur Gordon Pym]

US House speaker gets tour of all-male Saudi council

by Lydia Georgi

RIYADH (AFP) - US House speaker Nancy Pelosi sat in the speaker's chair on Thursday on a visit to conservative Saudi Arabia's all-male advisory council and said her talks with King Abdullah centered on his Middle East peace plan.
"Nice view from here," Pelosi said as she sat in the chair of Sheikh Saleh bin Humaid, a Muslim cleric who heads the 150-strong appointed Shura (consultative) Council.
Sporting a pistachio green pantsuit in a country where only foreign dignitaries are exempted from the abaya, the long black cloak that is a must for other women, Pelosi was shown around the posh advisory body and held a one-hour meeting with a dozen members.
"I am very pleased that after 200-plus years in the United States we finally have a (woman) speaker. It took us a long time," Pelosi said when asked how she felt about sitting in a place from which Saudi women are excluded.
The leading US Democrat put her hand on her chest when she was greeted by bin Humaid on arrival, the traditional response to greetings from clerics who do not shake hands with women. She did shake hands with other Shura members.
"Reform doesn't mean jumping steps; we are going about it step by step," said Abdulrahman al-Zamil, head of the council's Saudi-US friendship committee. He was speaking about the slow process of reform in Saudi Arabia, which has so far held only partial municipal elections from which women were barred.
Pelosi arrived in Riyadh on Wednesday, on the last leg of a regional trip attacked by the White House for taking in Syria. She said her talks with King Abdullah focused on a Saudi-authored peace plan revived at an Arab summit in the Saudi capital last week.
"Our discussions with his majesty centered around his initiative, the Saudi initiative for peace in the Middle East," she told reporters.
"There's a lot of negotiation that must follow, but we commended him for his leadership on that subject."
The blueprint offers Israel normal relations if it withdraws from all Arab land seized in the 1967 war and allows the creation of a Palestinian state and the return of Palestinian refugees.
Pelosi said the talks also covered Abdullah's initiatives to help resolve the conflicts in Sudan's Darfur region and in Somalia, and "we also had a long discussion about what is happening in Lebanon, in Syria ... in terms of having fairness and justice as we move forward to a path to peace."
Official Saudi media said the situation in Iraq was raised during the meeting, which came one week after the Saudi monarch, whose country is a key US ally, slammed US control of Iraq as "an illegitimate foreign occupation."
Oil powerhouse Saudi Arabia led the drive to relaunch the Mideast peace blueprint amid concern in the Sunni-dominated kingdom about the violence in Iraq between the once ruling minority Sunnis and the majority governing Shiites who are close to Iran, the region's Shiite heavyweight.
"We did not have that discussion," Pelosi said when asked whether Iraq was brought up in the light of Abdullah's comments.
Analysts said the king's criticism reflected a belief that the US administration's strategy in Iraq is doomed as well as frustration that President George W. Bush has rejected a Saudi-brokered power-sharing deal between US-backed Palestinian moderates and the militant Islamist group Hamas.
The Bush administration is is fighting attempts by the Democratic-controlled Congress to set a timetable for the pullout of US troops from Iraq. It has accused Pelosi of undermining efforts to isolate the regime of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad over its alleged support of terrorism and purported meddling in Iraq and Lebanon.
Pelosi's delegation includes Democrat Keith Ellison, the first Muslim elected to the US Congress.
Pelosi, who met Israeli and Palestinian leaders and also visited Lebanon during her tour, was due to leave Saudi Arabia early on Friday.

[source]