Egyptian democracy activists said on Tuesday that they will be urging US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton to curb Saudi Arabia’s attempts to stop the democratic tide in the region. The activists are due to meet with Clinton during her forthcoming visit to Egypt, and are likely to raise the issue of troops sent by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states to Bahrain to help it suppress an uprising.
They fear Washington might turn a blind eye to the Saudi intervention so as not to jeopardize its relations with a strategic ally in a region that controls the global oil market.
They also said that they and their counterparts in several Arab countries have noticed that Saudi Arabia has started to launch political and economic initiatives, as well as use the media, to thwart democratic revolutions in the region.
One of the activists said that sending troops to Bahrain is an "an example of how Saudi Arabia can use its economic power and its relations with Islamist groups to curb democracy in the Arab world."
Another activist said: "Washington should realize that such interventions by an ally will have an adverse effect on the way it handles the new situation in the region."
The New York Times on Tuesday pointed to tension in US-Saudi relations against the backdrop of the latter intervening in Bahrain, adding that Clinton and Defense Secretary Robert Gates had canceled a visit to Riyadh because of the matter.
For its part, Saudi Arabia said it did not agree with the way the US administration has handled developments that led to the ouster of former President Hosni Mubarak.
