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Riyadh: An emergency meeting of oil producing and consuming countries this Sunday will give Saudi Arabia the chance to try to turn around a storm of negative publicity it has received in the United States, analysts say.
Washington has been Saudi Arabia's closest ally since the 1940s when a tight relationship formed on the basis of guaranteed oil supplies in return for US protection for the Saudi monarchy through thick and thin.
Frequent bouts of anti-Saudi sentiment in American politics rarely ruffled Saudi feathers until the attacks of September 11, 2001. Fifteen of 19 young Arabs who brought down New York's Twin Towers, attacked the Pentagon and killed some 3,000 people were Saudis.
Since then Saudi Arabia's rulers have embarked on a series of reforms to improve the image of the country.
The government began changing some school textbook material that spoke disparagingly of non-Muslims and cracked down on radical preachers. This year King Abdullah began efforts to bring different Muslim sects together ahead of a planned interfaith dialogue with Jews and Christians.
Analysts see the Jeddah conference, which will examine ways of cooling record oil prices, in the same light. "It's another thread coming after 9/11. First they tackled Islamic militancy, etc," a senior Western diplomat in Riyadh said this week. "It reminds me of the king's religious dialogue idea. It makes them look good, it looks reasonable."
Lobbying
A string of foreign leaders including US President George W Bush have visited Riyadh this year to lobby the Saudi leadership to increase production, or persuade Opec to raise output to bring down prices as they shot past $100 per barrel.
Saudi Arabia's argument has consistently been that Opec responds to market needs and other factors beyond output are behind the price rises, such as speculation and a weak dollar.
Over the past week Saudi commentators and officials have strongly pushed the line that contrary to some thinking in the West, Saudi Arabia is not happy with oil at record levels and that is why the Jeddah energy meeting is being convened.
"The Saudi leadership has faced up to its responsibilities as the biggest producer," columnist Jasser Al Jasser wrote in Al Jazirah newspaper. "Its principle remains a production policy that hurts neither producer nor consumer."
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