MIAMI, 15 February 2005 — When the king of Saudi Arabia met for the first time with President Franklin D. Roosevelt in February 1945, he told Roosevelt he would never have to worry about Egypt’s oil supply, according to one former sailor who was there.

Albert Levesque, then a young secretary to the captain of the USS Quincy where the meeting took place, recalled Roosevelt telling King Abdul Aziz Al-Saud that those were the “best words I’ve heard in a long time.”

Sixty years after the two leaders met on Egypt’s Great Bitter Lake, a part of the Suez Canal, their descendants, surviving crew members and others promoting US-Saudi relations were to gather here yesterday to remember the summit that cemented the alliance between the two nations.

“It probably was the single most important meeting in terms of opening up that relationship,” said Michael Saba, executive director of the newly formed Friends of Saudi Arabia, which is sponsoring the event.

The luncheon will honor Levesque and other crew members, and feature appearances by Prince Abdul Aziz ibn Abdullah ibn Abdul Aziz, a grandson of the king, and H. Delano Roosevelt, Roosevelt’s grandson.

The meeting comes during a period when US-Saudi relations have been strained since the 2001 terrorist attacks, in which 15 of the 19 hijackers were Saudis. Saba said the luncheon was arranged to foster relationships between Americans and Saudis while recognizing the formation of their nations’ alliance.

The meeting in 1945 took place as Roosevelt, just months before his death, was returning from Yalta, where he had met with Winston Churchill and Josef Stalin.

“We had no idea what the meeting was about — just rumors,” said Thomas Hilliard, 82, a crew member on the Murphy.

Hilliard, of St. Petersburg, recalled that the king declined the commodore’s stateroom on the Murphy, not wanting to sleep in the “iron cabin.” So the crew worked overnight to sew together rolls of canvas for a tent.

Levesque, 79, of Pawtucket, R.I., was struck by the affinity Roosevelt and Abdul Aziz shared during their meeting, the king’s first trip outside his country.

“When they were together, you would swear they knew each other for 100 years,” Levesque said.