Former U.S. Ambassador to the Kingdom Robert Jordan, in an interview with the Saudi-US Relations Information Service (SUSRIS), an affiliate of the National Council on U.S. Arab Relations, affirmed that it is in the interest of the United States to have firm and strong relations with Saudi Arabia, and declared that current publications “don't really do much to add to the responsible debate.  They are harmful in many ways to the relationship because they have so grossly misstated the facts that I think commissions like the 9/11 Commission are in the process of pointing out.”

Ambassador Jordan went on to praise the Kingdom’s efforts in the war on terrorism and its cooperation in this with the United States; the Saudi position on the global oil situation; the measures Saudi Arabia has taken to join the World Trade Organization (WTO); and Crown Prince Abdullah’s initiative at the 2002 Arab Summit in Beirut towards solving the Arab-Israeli conflict. He concluded that “long-term, the common interests that unite us will be stronger than what divides us.  We clearly both have a commitment to winning the war on terrorism, to minimizing terrorist financing and to stabilizing world economic markets, particularly in the oil and petrochemical areas.”

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