Reuters,Dubai :
A senior Saudi official, responding to Iranian criticism of Riyadh’s management of the haj pilgrimage, urged Iran to end what he called wrong attitudes towards Arabs and warned it against any use of force in its rivalry with the kingdom.
Mecca province governor Prince Khaled al-Faisal, in remarks likely to be seen as a reference to Iran, added that the orderly conduct of the pilgrimage this year “is a response to all the lies and slanders made against the kingdom”.
The remarks carried by the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) on Wednesday evening follow an escalating war of words between Shia Muslim Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia since a crush at the annual haj pilgrimage a year ago in which hundreds of pilgrims, many of them Iranians, died.
SPA quoted Prince Khaled as telling journalists his message to the Iranian leadership was “I pray to God Almighty to guide them and to deter them from their transgression and their wrong attitudes toward their fellow Muslim among the Arabs in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and around the world”.
“But if they are preparing an army to invade us, we are not easily taken by someone who would make war on us.”
A senior Saudi official, responding to Iranian criticism of Riyadh’s management of the haj pilgrimage, urged Iran to end what he called wrong attitudes towards Arabs and warned it against any use of force in its rivalry with the kingdom.
Mecca province governor Prince Khaled al-Faisal, in remarks likely to be seen as a reference to Iran, added that the orderly conduct of the pilgrimage this year “is a response to all the lies and slanders made against the kingdom”.
The remarks carried by the official Saudi Press Agency (SPA) on Wednesday evening follow an escalating war of words between Shia Muslim Iran and Sunni Saudi Arabia since a crush at the annual haj pilgrimage a year ago in which hundreds of pilgrims, many of them Iranians, died.
SPA quoted Prince Khaled as telling journalists his message to the Iranian leadership was “I pray to God Almighty to guide them and to deter them from their transgression and their wrong attitudes toward their fellow Muslim among the Arabs in Iraq, Syria, Yemen and around the world”.
“But if they are preparing an army to invade us, we are not easily taken by someone who would make war on us.”
