ALKHOBAR, 21 April 2005 — Several hundred friends of Britain gathered at the residence of Mike Hurley, Head of the British Trade Office, Alkhobar, on Tuesday night to celebrate the birthday of Queen Elizabeth II. The UK’s Ambassador to Saudi Arabia, Sir Sherard Cowper-Coles, traveled to the Eastern Province to be with the British community on the happy occasion. The ambassador was in high spirits for the evening, quite a change from last year when the annual event had been held in the midst of the violence that had beset the Kingdom.
Going out to mingle with the guests, the ambassador gave an amusing speech in both Arabic and English in which he congratulated the Queen and the newly married Prince of Wales and Duchess of Cornwall and referred to the historical ties between Britain and Saudi Arabia.
The upcoming British elections were a subject of much discussion over the course of the evening but like a proper civil servant, Cowper-Coles had no opinion of his own on the voting. He did point his guests to the opinion polls in Britain, which at the moment suggest a third Labour victory.
The bottom line is that whoever is prime minister and whoever is foreign secretary after the elections, Cowper-Coles will be here to serve them. The functioning of the British Foreign and Commonwealth Office is quite separate from the election process.
“We are apolitical public servants, whether we are in the diplomatic service working overseas or in the home civil service in the UK, we don’t have political appointees on any significant scale,” said the ambassador. “I think just one or two of our ambassadors are political appointees and every department in Whitehall has one or perhaps two politically appointed special advisers. Apart from that it’s all politically neutral civil servants.”
The ambassador was upbeat about the relationship between the UK and the Kingdom and advised that his staff is hard at work to further strengthen those ties.
“Our policy is very much one of engagement with Saudi Arabia. The Kingdom has faced some tough challenges and our approach is one of accompanying Saudi Arabia on its journey. We are trying to promote maximum engagement and we have had some success,” he said.
“We had two major ministerial visits a month ago, just before the election was called. We’ve had a very large number of business visitors coming out to Saudi Arabia, but also we’ve had a 20 percent rise in the number of Saudis seeking visas to visit Britain so far this year. That’s on top of the 30 percent rise in 2004. So the total increase on 2003, year on year, in the number of Saudis visiting Britain is 50 percent.”
Cowper-Coles stated that the numbers include both tourists and businessmen. He added that 98 percent of visas are issued to Saudis on the same day.
“For Saudis that turn up at the British Embassy at nine o’clock in the morning, their visas can be collected by two o’clock in the afternoon in 98 percent of cases,” he said. “We are looking at ways of making it easier for Saudis, particularly those in the Eastern Province, to obtain visas as it were, by remote control, via visa agents and that sort of thing. Frankly, we think Saudis are extremely good visitors to Britain. They don’t overstay and they don’t break visa conditions.”
There has also been a boom in the number of student visas issued for Saudis studying in the UK.
“About a quarter of all Saudis studying overseas are in the UK, about the same proportion as is in the US. So that is extremely encouraging,” the ambassador remarked. “All of us I think regret the decline in the substance of the US-Saudi relationship. I don’t think anyone benefits from that. Nevertheless we are doing what we can to strengthen the Saudi-British relationship.”
Cowper-Coles believes that if certain aspects of the economic policies in the Kingdom were changed, the UK and the Kingdom could have an even more dynamic relationship.
“This country is seeing unprecedented economic growth. It needs to engage with the outer world. There are still areas here that need to be liberalized. For example, every week there are 132 direct flights between Dubai and London. Weekly, there are only three direct flights between Riyadh and London. Saudi Arabia is the giant of the Arab world. It is a giant Arab economy. It is a major political power. It is the home of Islam. I know the Saudi authorities understand this, agree with me and we are working together to try and get that opening up that both sides will benefit from.”
The recent discontinuance of flights to Saudi Arabia by British Airways was as distressful to Cowper-Coles as it was to the Kingdom’s traveling public.
“As soon as I heard that BA were thinking of withdrawing, I approached four British Airlines,” he said. “Three of them were extremely interested and one of them is actively pursuing discussions with a view to opening up a service later this year. I think everyone will benefit from that.”
New airlines are interested to come to the Kingdom not only because of the high level of business expected, but also because the security situation in Saudi Arabia has improved enormously since last year.
“From a security perspective things are going very well,” the ambassador commented. “We have a team from Scotland Yard in the embassy who work very closely with the Saudi authorities. They are very impressed with what is by any standards a highly successful counter terrorist campaign. As Prince Muhammad ibn Naif would be the first to acknowledge, you can’t be complacent. You can never relax. You can never say that there aren’t going to be any attacks. There probably will be more attacks. But our view is that the network has been significantly degraded and disrupted.”
Cowper-Coles then went on to share an anecdote told to him by a British expatriate in the Kingdom.
“An expat working in Saudi Arabia had been back to visit the British city of Nottingham, in the British Midlands, which has one of the highest murder rates in the UK,” the ambassador related.
“He was saying he felt completely ridiculous having to give British businessmen from Nottingham assurances about the security here when Nottingham is the murder capital of the UK at the moment. It is far more dangerous, statistically, to be in Nottingham, than to be in Alkhobar, Dammam or Riyadh!”
