Top White House aide delivers Obama letter to Saudi king

The hastily arranged visit to the kingdom by national security adviser Thomas E. Donilon came less than a week after Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates made the same trip. While administration officials confirmed the delivery of Obama’s missive, they declined to specify its contents.

Neither government denies that there has been a divergence of views between the entrenched, conservative monarchy and the administration, which is struggling to balance its substantial interests and alliances in the region with its desire to see democratic reforms.

The stakes are high for both sides, perhaps higher for Obama.

Saudi Arabia, in addition to being the world’s largest oil exporter and the site of the Muslim world’s holiest sites, is the leading U.S. regional partner on counterterrorism matters. An extensive bilateral intelligence and law enforcement infrastructure has been established over the past decade. A pending $60 billion arms deal with the Saudis is the largest in U.S. history.

A senior Saudi official said the back-to-back U.S. trips were less “fence-mending” than consultations on “how do we move forward. . . given all the things that are happening, in ways that best protect our interests.”

While the administration sees democratic potential in the Arab spring, the Saudis are feeling an ominous chill from all points of the compass —Bahrain to the east, Yemen to the south, Egypt to the west and Iraq to the north. They have also seen signs of internal unrest, with minor Shiite demonstrations in the eastern part of the kingdom in recent weeks. Continued…