RIYADH – Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah is to return home this week after convalescing in Morocco from operations in New York, a source close to the oil-rich Gulf monarchy said on Sunday. “The king is expected to return Wednesday and preparations are underway” to greet Abdullah, the official told AFP, requesting anonymity. Another source said the heads of Saudi state media, especially television channels, have been instructed to begin from Tuesday to broadcast special programmes on the king’s return.
The streets of Riyadh have already been decorated with national flags for the monarch’s return. Riyadh’s ambassador to Rabat told AFP on Friday the king would soon return to his country. “I was talking to him 15 minutes ago and I can assure you he is very well,” Mohammed ibn Abderrahman al-Bishr said. King Abdullah, 86, arrived in Morocco on January 22 after surgery on his back in the United States and will return home to a Middle East rocked by anti-regime uprisings, although his own country has been spared.
In his absence, mass street protests led to the ouster of Egypt’s president Hosni Mubarak, Saudi Arabia’s close ally whom the king has backed in a phone call from Morocco. Before Mubarak’s ouster on February 11, Tunisia’s strongman Zine El Abidine Ben Ali fled to Saudi Arabia’s Red Sea city of Jeddah after protests toppled his regime in mid-January.
