Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan is no more the leader of the Kingdom’s efforts to arm and fund the Takfiri terrorists who have been fighting the Syrian government, reports said.
Saudi Prince Bandar Bin Sultan is no more the leader of the Kingdom’s efforts to arm and fund the Takfiri terrorists who have been fighting the Syrian government, reports said.
American newspaper, The Wall Street Journal, quoted Saudi royal advisers as saying this week that Bandar was replaced with another prince well-regarded by U.S. officials for his successes fighting al-Qaeda.
“Prince Bandar, an experienced but at times mercurial ex-diplomat and intelligence chief, presided over Saudi Arabia's Syria operations for the past two years with little success, as a rift opened up with the US over how much to back rebels fighting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, the daily said referring to the foreign-backed militants fighting the Syrian government.
“Interior Minister Prince Mohammad bin Nayef, who has won praise in Washington for his counter terror work against al Qaeda in Yemen and elsewhere, is now a main figure in carrying out Syria policy, a royal adviser and a security analyst briefed by Saudi officials said Tuesday,” The Wall Street Journal added.
The report also quoted the advisers as saying that Prince Miteb bin Abdullah, Saudi King Abdullah's son and head of the Saudi National Guard, “has also assumed a bigger share of responsibility for the kingdom's policy towards Syria.”
On February 19, the Washington Post also reported that Mohammad Bin Nayef had recently represented Saudi Arabia at a conclave of Western and Arab spymasters in the United States, where he held talks with US National Security Adviser Susan Rice over the policies in Syria.
According to The Wall Street Journal, a Saudi analyst serving as an adviser to top royals said that the world will begin to see a “new strategy for Syria -- quieter, more open, not too extreme. There will be more politics to it, and probably much less military.”
The report cited Saudi royal advisors as saying that the removal of Prince Bandar from the task may lead to smoother Riyadh-Washington relations.
