Word: khalid
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...most influential princes of the royal family appear to have closed ranks, as they have done in previous crises. Ailing King Khalid, 67, has embarked on a series of pilgrimages throughout the country to solidify support for the royal family. Crown Prince Fahd, Deputy Prime Minister and heir presumptive to the throne, continues to handle day-to-day chores; most-although not all-observers in Riyadh believe his authority has increased as he seeks to carry out reforms to quell potential unrest. The next princes in line, National Guard Commander Abdullah and Defense Minister Sultan, seem to have buried their...
...possessor of the world's largest oil reserves, the vulnerability of the royal family was made starkly apparent when a band of 200 to 300 well-armed raiders in November seized the Sacred Mosque in Mecca, the holiest of all Islamic shrines, which is under the protection of King Khalid. The raiders appeared to have mixed religious and political motives: they seemingly were armed and trained in Marxist South Yemen, but were fundamentalists opposed to all modernism, led by a zealot who had proclaimed the revolution in Iran to be a "new dawn" for Islam. It took the Saudi army...
Stoessinger could have added the names of Khomeini, Gaddafi, Khalid, Schmidt, Giscard, Ohira, Brezhnev, Lopez Portillo, Torrijos, Thatcher-all humans magnified mightily by the television lens, transposed into looming actors on a global stage...
...deliberately burned by their surviving comrades to conceal the victims' identities. Some 160 of the intruders were captured, and will be tried on charges of defacing a holy place. The likely sentence: death by beheading. Saudi officials are now convinced that the whole operation was aimed at King Khalid and the royal family. The King had planned to worship at the mosque that day but changed his mind because of illness. Some eyewitnesses reported that the guerrillas closely examined the faces of hundreds of worshipers, apparently in the hope that the King, in disguise, might be among them...
...attack has deeply alarmed Saudi leaders. Questions are being asked about whether Crown Prince Fahd, the heir apparent to King Khalid, commands enough authority, especially among the armed forces, to withstand a broader-based insurrection. One U.S. expert believes that the regime should embark on an emergency anticorruption campaign, but he is not particularly hopeful. His conclusion: "Some say the royal family can survive. Some say it is too late...