US seeks $ 300 billion from Gulf states: report


One hundred riyal notes at a bank in Riyadh, the Saudi Arabian capital. The US has asked four oil-rich Gulf states for close to US$300 billion to help it curb the global financial meltdown, Kuwait’s daily Al-Seyassah has reported.
(AFP/File/Hassan Ammar)

KUWAIT CITY (AFP) – The United States has asked four oil-rich Gulf states for close to 300 billion dollars to help it curb the global financial meltdown, Kuwait’s daily Al-Seyassah reported Thursday.

Quoting “highly informed” sources, the daily said Washington has asked Saudi Arabia for 120 billion dollars, the United Arab Emirates for 70 billion dollars, Qatar for 60 billion dollars and was seeking 40 billion dollars from Kuwait.

Al-Seyassah said Washington sought the amount as “financial aid” to face the fallout of the financial crisis and help prevent its economy from sliding into a painful recession.

The daily said the United States plans to use the funds to help the ailing automobile industry , banks and other companies suffering from the global financial turmoil.

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Financial tempest spreads to the Gulf states

As stocks slid Sunday in Kuwait, a group of investors showed up at the Seif Palace, where they were met by the police, and tried to demand government intervention. (Gustavo Ferrari/AP)

The global economic crisis extended its reach into the Gulf states Sunday, as Kuwait suspended trading in shares of a major bank and the Saudi authorities announced a plan to help citizens receive credit.

The Central Bank of Kuwait halted trading in Gulf Bank, one of the country’s largest lenders, after a customer defaulted on a derivatives contract. The central bank said it would “strongly support the bank’s financial position” and protect depositors, to assure the public that Gulf Bank’s business “will not be affected.”

The central bank also said it was moving toward guaranteeing deposits at local banks. Many other countries have already taken that step, putting lenders in countries with no guarantee at a disadvantage.

In Saudi Arabia, always sensitive to potential unrest, King Abdullah said that 10 billion riyals, or $2.7 billion, would be placed in an account in the Saudi Bank of Credit & Saving to enable the bank to help hundreds of thousands of citizens get loans for family needs including marriages and home repairs.

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Petraeus Testimony Next Week Will Signal Iran Attack

By Paul Craig Roberts

Paul Craig Roberts a former Assistant Secretary of the US Treasury and former associate editor of the Wall Street Journal, has been reporting shocking cases of prosecutorial abuse for two decades. A new edition of his book, The Tyranny of Good Intentions, co-authored with Lawrence Stratton, a documented account of how Americans lost the protection of law, is forthcoming from Random House in March, 2008.

06/04/08 “ICH’ — – April 5, 2008. Today the London Telegraph reported that “British officials gave warning yesterday that America’s commander in Iraq will declare that Iran is waging war against the US-backed Baghdad government. A strong statement from General David Petraeus about Iran’s intervention in Iraq could set the stage for a US attack on Iranian militiary facilities, according to a Whitehall assessment.”

The neocon lacky Petraeus has had his script written for him by Cheney, and Petraeus together with neocon warmonger Ryan Crocker, the US governor of the Green Zone in Baghdad, will present Congress next Tuesday and Wednesday with the lies, for which the road has been well paved by neocon propagandists such as Kimberly Kagan, that “the US must recognize that Iran is engaged in a full-up proxy war against it in Iraq.”

Don’t expect Congress to do anything except to egg on the attack. On April 3 the International Herald Tribune reported that senators and representatives have made millions of dollars from their investments in defense companies totaling $196 million. Rep. Ike Skelton, the Democrat chairman of the House Armed Services Committee, is already on board with the attack on Iran. The London Telegraph quotes Skelton: “Iran is the bull in the china shop. In all of this, they seem to have links to all of the Shi’ite groups, whether they be political or military.”

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