Saudi State Of Alert After King Hospitalized

Saudi state of alert after king hospitalized
Friday, May 27, 2005 Posted: 2:33 PM EDT (1833 GMT)

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/meast/...eut/index.html

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (Reuters) -- Saudi Arabia declared a state of alert and cancelled all leave of its security forces on Friday after ailing King Fahd was taken to hospital, an Interior Ministry official said.

"The authorities declared a state of alert, cancelled all leave of the security forces and put forces on standby after the king was admitted to hospital," the official told Reuters.

The ruler of the world's top oil exporter was taken to King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh on Friday evening with a fever and water in his lungs.

"King Fahd was running a high temperature for three days and this caused concern and required scans, tests and some treatment," a Saudi official told Reuters.

The monarch, in his early 80s, suffered a stroke in 1995. Day-to-day rule of the Gulf Arab state passed to his half-brother Crown Prince Abdullah after his stroke.

Medical sources said the king had a lung infection and that a CAT scan would be performed.

"King Fahd entered King Faisal Specialist Hospital in Riyadh this evening to undergo some medical examinations," SPA quoted a palace statement as saying. It gave no further details.

"We ask God to keep and care for the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques and grant him health and well being," the statement said.

The monarch has been ailing for the last decade and rumors about his condition have frequently surfaced in Saudi Arabia and on international oil markets.

Fahd underwent eye surgery to remove a cataract in 2003 in Riyadh. The year before that he had a similar operation on his other eye at a Geneva hospital.

Saudi Arabia is the birthplace of Islam and of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. It has been battling a two-year campaign of violence by al Qaeda supporters.

Comment By Jamie Hecht - From The Wilderness

[Each account of the sharp decline in King Fahd's condition seems to end with a reference to Osama bin Laden. But just who is he? Even if Professor Chossudovsky is correct (and he usually is) in his assertion that Osama remains a well-controlled CIA asset, fomenting a largely bogus War-on-Terror as a screen for American resource wars, the fact remains that large numbers of Muslims are persuaded of his bona fides and associate him with Islamic dignity and self-assertion.

Fahd has been comatose since 1996. As FTW has argued in SAUDI ARABIA, THE SARAJEVO OF THE 21ST CENTURY, the news that Fahd's long life is coming to an end may have any of several rationales. There may be a new accord between the two competing claimants to the throne, Crown Princes Sultan and Abdullah; that would make it safe to announce the demise of the old King. Or Fahd's allegedly new symptoms may be really new, so that unpredictable events will be triggered that are beyond the control of either Prince (or the Council, or the CIA, etc.). In that case, popular support for bin Laden may be an important factor in the outcome. The big danger is that a civil war will break out, involving pro-Western Saudi forces led by Sultan; ambivalent Saudi forces led by Abdullah (who founded the Council responsible for deciding the succession); and a third force that opposes the Saudi family on largely religious grounds. Of course, the secular left has been so disabled by decades of repression and Wahabism that no fourth force of labor is likely to appear. In the event of a civil war, the side with the upper hand is likely to preserve its cash flow by protecting the oil infrastructure, while the side that falls behind may sabotage that flow by destroying wells. Aramco must be nervous. -JAH]