Prince Saud al-Faisal, who has died aged 75, was an urbane politician who used quiet diplomacy to elevate Saudi Arabia's regional influence and its alliance with the United States during his four decades as foreign minister.
Before his retirement in April, Prince Saud was the world's longest-serving foreign minister and over the years he helped shape the kingdom's responses to monumental changes in the Middle East. During his tenure, he helped negotiate the end of a destructive civil war in Lebanon and dealt with the Palestinian uprisings against Israel in 1987 and 2000, the September 11th, 2001 attacks on New York and the Pentagon, the US invasion of Iraq in 2003 and the Arab uprisings of 2011.
He used a combination of oil wealth, religious influence and close relationships with world leaders as leverage for diplomacy that was most often conducted far from the public eye. “It was traditional, state diplomacy that was conservative, quiet and logical,” said Abdullah al-Shammari, a Saudi political analyst in Riyadh, the capital, and a former diplomat. “He did not take hasty or emotional positions.”
The length of Prince Saud’s tenure and his role inside the royal family made him an essential player in the reigns of four Saudi kings and an interlocutor for seven US presidents.
Fluent
As fluent in English as he was in Arabic and as comfortable in a suit and tie as in a traditional Saudi robe, he was for much of his career a familiar face in
Washington
and other capitals.
While many Saudis praised Prince Saud as an international representative of the kingdom and its policies, he often called his failure to help the Palestinians achieve an independent state his greatest regret.
"We have not yet seen moments of joy in all that time," he said, looking back on his career in a New York Times interview in 2009. "We have seen only moments of crisis; we have seen only moments of conflict, and how can you have any pleasure in anything that happens when you have people like the Palestinians living as they are?"
Prince Saud al-Faisal bin Abdulaziz Al Saud was born in the Saudi city of Taef in 1940, the third son of the Saudi foreign minister, Prince Faisal, who became king in 1964.
Economics degree
He was educated at the Hun School of Princeton and then at Princeton University, where he played soccer. Returning to
Saudi Arabia
with a degree in economics he worked in the Saudi oil ministry before replacing his father as foreign minister after his assassination in 1975.
That year, a civil war that would shake Lebanon for 15 years began, and Prince Saud became one of the mediators who helped bring about an accord that ended hostilities in 1990.
While he maintained close ties with Washington, the kingdom’s relationship with the United States was not always smooth. Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait in 1990 led to the deployment of US troops on Saudi soil, a move that caused consternation among the Saudi public and in much of the Arab world.
US support for Israel also raised tensions, while the 9/11 attacks further strained relations, especially after it was determined that 15 of the 19 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia.
Many Saudis described Prince Saud’s passing as the end of an era, and some have expressed concern about the kingdom’s new, more assertive posture, typified by the bombing campaign it is leading against the Houthi rebels in Yemen. Prince Saud is survived by three sons and three daughters.