Saudi Arabia’s Middle East peace initiative will top the agenda when Crown Prince Abdullah meets President Bush on April 25. The de facto Saudi leader’s peace initiative — which offers Israel normal ties with Arabs in exchange for a full withdrawal of Arab land occupied in 1967 — won full backing at last month’s Arab summit in Beirut.

The prince is expected to highlight the “urgency” of a greater U.S. role in curbing the Israeli-Palestinian violence when he visits Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, according to a Saudi Arabian source.

Prince Abdullah accepted Bush’s invitation nine months after snubbing a similar invite in anger over what he saw as U.S. bias toward Israel. In August, Prince Abdullah warned Bush that ties between the oil-rich kingdom and its key ally were at a crossroads and Riyadh would be forced to review them unless Washington took steps to resolve the Arab-Israeli conflict.

Investigative reporter Greg Palast tells another story of the connections between Saudi Arabia and the Bush administration. Palast is the author of ??The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and in that book he digs deep to unearth the ugly facts that few reporters have the courage or freedom to cover. From Tallahassee to Karachi, Houston to Santiago, he has exposed some of the most egregious cases of political corruption, corporate fraud and financial manipulation, globally. He began talking to us on Monday’s program about the Bush-Saudi connection, Enron, Argentina and the stolen US election of 2000.

Guest:

• Greg Palast, author of ??The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, and an investigative reporter who writes for the BBC, the British Guardian and the British Observer.

Related link:

• Greg Palast

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