Saudi King Abdullah dies

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9 Mins Ago
Breaking News

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah has died, state television reported early on Friday and his brother Salman became king, it said in a statement attributed to Salman.

King Salman has called on the family's Allegiance Council to pay allegiance to Muqrin as his crown prince and heir.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/102292477

This King Abdullah...

I wonder if our flag will be ordered half mast

Jan 22, 7:06 PM EST

Saudi state TV reports: King Abdullah has died at 90

By AYA BATRAWY and ABDULLAH AL-SHIHRI
Associated Press

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (AP) -- Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah, the powerful U.S. ally who joined Washington's fight against al-Qaida and sought to modernize the ultraconservative Muslim kingdom with incremental but significant reforms, including nudging open greater opportunities for women, has died, according to Saudi state TV. He was 90.

More than his guarded and hidebound predecessors, Abdullah assertively threw his oil-rich nation's weight behind trying to shape the Middle East. His priority was to counter the influence of rival, mainly Shiite Iran wherever it tried to make advances. He and fellow Sunni Arab monarchs also staunchly opposed the Middle East's wave of pro-democracy uprisings, seeing them as a threat to stability and their own rule.

He backed Sunni Muslim factions against Tehran's allies in several countries, but in Lebanon for example, the policy failed to stop Iranian-backed Hezbollah from gaining the upper hand. And Tehran and Riyadh's colliding ambitions stoked proxy conflicts around the region that enflamed Sunni-Shiite hatreds - most horrifically in Syria's civil war, where the two countries backed opposing sides. Those conflicts in turn hiked Sunni militancy that returned to threaten Saudi Arabia.

And while the king maintained the historically close alliance with Washington, there were frictions as he sought to put those relations on Saudi Arabia's terms. He was constantly frustrated by Washington's failure to broker a settlement to the Israel-Palestinian conflict. He also pushed the Obama administration to take a tougher stand against Iran and to more strongly back the mainly Sunni rebels fighting to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Assad.

Read more: AP

Quote: FWP wrote in post #5

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Be interesting to see if Obama attends the funeral.

More interesting to see if he takes his wife ??

w


Middle Eastern scholar and expert Jim Murk, says :

"An orthodox Muslim man would never take his wife on a politically oriented trip to any nation which practices shari'ah law, which includes Saudi Arabia ... This is true and it is why Obama left Michelle in Europe or at home when he went to especially Arab countries."

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