A little elaboration on the Beebs article from yesterday...
Saudi Arabia vowed Wednesday to talk to Islamist militants fighting to overthrow the regime only with guns or swords, spurning a move by Muslim clerics to mediate in a bid to stop further suicide bombings.
| Does that mean they're going to talk to them directly? Or should there be a "not" before the verb? |
âWe can talk to them only with the gun and the sword,â Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz said.
| That sounds like a more reasonable approach... |
âAl Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the bomb attacks on al-Muhaya in Riyadh this past Saturday and said in an e-mail message ... that the next strikes will be in the Gulf, America and Iraq,â said Saudi weekly Al-Majalla. A group of Saudi clerics has offered to mediate between the militants and the Riyadh government. âA group of learned men and Saudi clerics is now trying to set up a mechanism to launch a dialogue between the government and the young men who have carried out acts of violence, in an effort to halt the bloodshed,â Sheikh Abdullah Nasser al-Sobeihi told AFP.
| I'll just bet they are... |
However another of the scholars, Sheikh Mohsen al-Awaji, accused âcertain circles of undermining the initiative to settle ideological conflicts which have nothing to do with the crisis the country is going through.â Awaji said the initiative was aimed at Islamists âwho are not involved in any act against their brothersâ and added that he remained âoptimistic.â But the official no-compromise stance has already been set out by King Fahd who warned Tuesday that the extremists who threaten his kingdom would be crushed with an âiron fistâ.
Prince Nayef, speaking to the official Saudi Press Agency, denied a press report that several people had been arrested over the latest blast. âNo one has been arrested up to now,â Nayef said. But the security forces âwill continue the hunt for these criminals to arrest them and bring them to justice,â he added.
| I'll believe he's serious when we hear about heads rolling. So will Qaeda... |
âThe security forces have already eliminated many terrorists, arrested others and seized large stocks of weapons that these criminals used to threaten the security of the country and its citizens,â the interior minister said. The crackdown began in earnest after the authorities blamed Al-Qaeda for triple suicide bombings that killed 35 people in Riyadh on May 12.
| But they weren't sufficiently serious about it, so they ended up with the slaughter at al-Muhaya. |
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