Saudi meet aims to soothe U.S. ire at oil price

RIYADH (Reuters) - 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 U.S. 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, acting in the name of a group led by a Saudi dissident.

Since then Saudi Arabia's rulers have embarked on a series of reforms to improve the image of arcane autocracy where the Saudi royal family rules with no elected parliament to limit its powers in alliance with clerics who are given free rein to apply the rulings of a centuries-old school of Islamic law.

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 oil 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."

A string of foreign leaders including U.S. 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.

SAUDI AGAINST HIGH OIL

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 daily. "Its principle remains a production policy that hurts neither producer nor consumer."

Saudi Arabia has been cited repeatedly in the U.S. presidential primary campaign over recent months as a prime mover behind high petrol pump prices and politicians have accused the Bush administration of not being tough with Riyadh.

In May the U.S. House of Representatives even approved legislation -- overwhelmingly -- allowing the Justice Department to sue OPEC members for limiting oil supplies and working together to set crude prices.

The White House threatened to veto the measure.

"Saudi Arabia called this conference because they see that the issue had to be explained to the most important party, which is the consumer," a senior Saudi official told Reuters. "For the first time, OPEC producing countries are saying to consumers 'we don't want higher prices'. There is a reversal of mood here."

The past week has seen feverish speculation that Riyadh will present the gift of a unilaterally-announced boost in production next month to 9.7 million barrels per day, from 9.45 million.

Some OPEC countries have reacted coolly to the idea, with Iran, Iraq and Libya saying supply was not the issue. Iranian and Venezuelan leaders regularly talk in glowing terms of oil's climb from the days of $10 a barrel in the late 1990s.

"It's becoming clear that the real volume of oil which (Saudis) might offer is quite small -- this is mainly a public relations exercise," said Greg Priddy, an oil analyst with Eurasia Group in Washington.

He said rocketing Asian demand for oil outstripped Saudi concern over Western moves away from oil in various spheres.

"But the security relationship still requires that they try to limit the damage to their political ties with the United States," he added.