INTERVIEW WITH ADEL AL-JUBEIR
Foreign Policy Advisor to Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdulaziz

SAUDI FOREIGN MINISTRY

August 15, 2002

Excerpts

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HOPKINS: Now, the Saudi Arabian government has said that the U.S. cannot use bases in Saudi Arabia to attack Iraq. What would be the conditions that would allow the U.S. to use Saudi bases for such an attack?

AL-JUBEIR: We have said, as has almost every country in the international community, that Saddam Hussein must be brought into compliance with U.N. resolutions. We have also said - we live right next to him, remember Jan, and we're the country most threatened by him - we have also said that there has to be a legal sanction. A case has to be made. We have not seen this case being made. And we have said that diplomacy seems to be working, let's give it a chance.

Has anybody thought through the consequences of war in terms of human suffering? In terms of financial cost? In terms of impact on the region? Has anybody ever thought through what the day after will look like? Is Iraq going to be dismembered? Who is going to take over?

This is not - we're not playing video games here. This is very serious.

Has anybody thought about the resources that have to be spread thin? You have one war in Afghanistan, you have another between war Israelis and Palestinians. The last thing the region needs is another war, in terms of Iraq. 

And so the point we make - which is the point that the Germans and the French and the British and the Australians and the Spanish and virtually every country in the world makes - is, let's think this through. Let's make the case, and let's see - and let's give diplomacy a chance. And if we can allow the inspectors back into Iraq, we will have achieved the objective without firing a single bullet.

And the irony of this is the inspectors on the ground have been able to do more damage to Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program than all of the bombings combined.

Let's try it.

HOPKINS: Thanks very much, Adel Al-Jubeir.