U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney suggested there's little more Saudi Arabia can do to increase oil production and relieve price pressures in global markets.
In a roundtable interview with reporters before departing Jerusalem for Turkey, he said that the Saudis "kept their word" when they promised three years ago to substantially boost production, investing $90 billion in the process. From a capacity of 10.5 million barrels a day in 2005, they'll hit 12.5 million barrels by 2009. They currently stand at 11.8 million.
Summarizing his talks with Israeli leaders, he said bluntly that Iran and Syria, in supplying and supporting the militant groups Hamas and Hezbollah, are "doing everything they can to torpedo the peace process."
He said an emerging area of concern is the smuggling of arms across the border into the Gaza Strip. That's fueling the rocket attacks from Gaza into Israel that have helped deadlock the peace negotiations with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, the vice president said.
Cheney also suggested that Abbas's government, headquartered in the West Bank, would make very high demands as a condition to a power-sharing agreement with Hamas. That's been suggested by some Arab leaders, given the lack of progress in the U.S.-engineered peace talks. The leadership in Ramallah, however, would demand a "complete reversal" of Hamas's takeover of Gaza from the Abbas government, Cheney said. The U.S. and Israel also are unlikely to negotiate with Hamas unless it renounces its intent to destroy Israel.
Meanwhile, Hezbollah backed by Syria and Iran has inserted itself more deeply into Lebanese politics, preventing a resolution of that country's political crisis, a senior administration added later. "They are clearly operating - Syria in particular - to deny Lebanon the opportunity to govern themselves," the official said.
On the mounting U.S. military death toll in the Middle East, he said it's a "tragedy" that we live in such a world, but "we do live in that kind of world."