‘Saudi a liability to US in terms of its intl. reputation’

Keith Preston made the remarks when was asked about a bipartisan group of US senators in Congress who have warned against growing human rights violations in Saudi Arabia.

At the confirmation hearing of new US Ambassador to Saudi Arabia John Abizaid on Wednesday, Republican and Democratic US senators censured the kingdom over its devastating war on Yemen and other rights abuses, including the detention and torture of women’s rights activists and the grisly murder of dissident Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi in Turkey.

Republican Senator Marco Rubio said Saudi Arabia was the “most difficult” US ally “because it almost asks us to agree to stay silent on grotesque violations of human rights both domestically and abroad.”

Preston said, “The humanitarian crisis in Yemen has gotten to be so extreme and such a serious international issue that it cannot really be ignored any longer, so I think there are more and more people in the political class in the United States, in the Congress and the Senate who recognize that this is an issue that is going to be addressed at some point and that Saudi Arabia has become something of a liability to the United States in terms of international  standing and reputation when the Saudis are carrying out actions like what they are doing in Yemen.”

“The fact that Saudi Arabian government has cracked down on women’s rights,” that “the Saudis murdered the journalist Jamal Khashoggi last year,” that “15 of the 19 hijackers involved in the September 11, 2001 incident were from Saudi Arabia, and (that) many people believe that the Saudi Arabia’s government was involved in that…..all of these things are converging to the point now where there is a lot of pressure on the American government to recognize some of these problems with Saudi Arabia,” he added.