RIYADH
Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal has died, family members and a foreign ministry spokesman said late Thursday, after two months of being replaced in his 40 years job.
“May God accept him in paradise,” the prince’s nephew Saud Mohammed al-Abdullah al-Faisal said on Twitter.
Prince Saud, who was appointed in 1975, was the world’s longest-serving foreign minister when he was replaced on April 29 by Adel al-Jubeir, the then ambassador to Washington.
His tenure saw Israel invade Lebanon in 1978, 1982 and 2006, the eruption of Palestinian intifadas in 1987 and 2000, Iraq’s invasions of Iran in 1980 and Kuwait in 1990, and the occupation of Iraq by a US-led coalition in 2003.
During a moment of tension in Saudi ties with its main ally the United States in 2004, he described the relationship as “a Muslim marriage” in which the kingdom could retain different wives if it treated them all with fairness.
He retained that incisiveness even as a chronic back complaint and other maladies in recent years made his hands shaky and his speech slurred.
His career as a diplomat began traumatically: the new King Khaled named him as foreign minister following the assassination of Prince Saud’s father Faisal, who had retained the foreign affairs portfolio after being made king in 1962.
For all his talents as a diplomat, however, Prince Saud failed to build the kingdom’s foreign ministry into a body with great institutional depth.
