'It Is the Other Way Around'.(Prince Saud al-Faisal of Saudi Arabia)(Interview)

With King Fahd disabled and Crown Prince Abdullah press-shy, Prince Saud al- Faisal, long-time foreign minister of Saudi Arabia, is the highest-ranking official in that country who is willing to grant interviews. In late December, he sat down with NEWSWEEK's Jonathan Alter to discuss recent tensions involving the conservative kingdom and the region at large. Excerpts:

NEWSWEEK: What do you think the odds are right now that there will be a war in Iraq?

PRINCE SAUD: We are not people who believe the United States wants war regardless of what the considerations are, and I think the president has shown wisdom and patience in his policy. This is why we have optimism that war can be avoided.

Do you think that there is a struggle underway in Saudi Arabia between what could generally be called the Wahhabi forces versus the more moderate forces in society?

[Foreign] newspapers view Saudi Arabia as a country seething with people frustrated because they want development, and the government is blocking all sorts of reform. It is the other way around. You go around the country and see that it is the government that wants to move in all these directions, but it is not going to move by forcing a revolution from the top. It is going to move at the speed the social structure [will allow]. We don't want to break the social contract of the country by forcing on people things that they don't want to do.

But do you think the public supports the [anti-vice police's] enforcing certain social traditions in the way that it does?

Not blindly. People are religious here. This is undoubtedly true. But this is not bad. I mean, why is this considered an evil thing? And extremists are not only in Saudi Arabia. Historically there have been firebrands everywhere. You go to the Bible Belt in the United States, and you hear religious people talking perhaps in the same language that religious people are talking in here--hell and damnation and things of that sort.