Riyadh urges JASTA rejig – Wisdom urged

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DUBAI, Oct 3, (Agencies): Saudi Arabia said on Monday that a US law allowing citizens to sue the kingdom over the Sept 11, 2001 attacks represented a threat to international relations and urged Congress to act to prevent any dangerous consequences from the new legislation.

The cabinet, at its weekly meeting in the capital Riyadh, also said that the law, known as JASTA, represented a violation of a leading principle preventing lawsuits against governments that regulated international relations for hundreds of years. “Weakening this sovereign immunity will affect all countries, including the United States,” the statement by Saudi Information Minister Adel al-Toraifi, carried by Saudi state news agency SPA, said. “(The cabinet) expressed hope that wisdom will prevail and that the US Congress would take the necessary steps to avoid the bad and dangerous consequences that may result from the JASTA legislation,” it added.

The US Senate and House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly last Wednesday to approve legislation that will allow the families of those killed in the 2001 attacks on the United States to seek damages from the Saudi government.

Fifteen out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Riyadh has always dismissed suspicions that it backed the attackers, who killed nearly 3,000 people under the banner of Islamist militant group al-Qaeda. Riyadh is one of Washington’s longest-standing and most important allies in the Middle East and part of a US-led coalition fi ghting Islamic State militants in Iraq and Syria.

The Saudi government lobbied strongly against JASTA, which stands for the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act, in the run-up to the vote, and warned it would undermine the principle of sovereign immunity. But Saudi officials stopped short of threatening any specifi c retaliation if the law was passed. Saudi government workers will be paid according to the Gregorian calendar instead of the Islamic Hijri calendar, making the working month longer as part of cost-cutting measures, newspapers reported Monday. The change, approved by cabinet last week, brings civil service pay in line with the government’s January- December fiscal year, the Arab News and Saudi Gazette reported. The reports said the latest austerity measure took effect on Oct 1. Saudi Arabia, the world’s biggest oil exporter, is cutting government spending and re-orienting its economy after a collapse over the past two years of the global oil price which provided most of its revenue.

The Hijri calender consists of 12 months of 29 or 30 days depending on the sighting of the moon, meaning the Islamic year is several days shorter than the Gregorian calendar, which is widely used in the world. Last week, cabinet also cut by 20 percent the salaries of ministers and froze the wages of lower-ranked civil servants. Almost twice as many Saudis are employed in the bloated public sector — where hours are shorter and leave longer — than in private fi rms. In April, the king’s son, Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, announced the wide-ranging Vision 2030 plan to diversify the economy. Among its goals, Vision 2030 aims to boost private sector employment, cutting the government payroll to 40 percent of the budget from 45 percent by 2020.

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