British Ambassador to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia William Batey has lauded the development of cooperation relations between the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia and Britain in various fields, stressing that Saudi Arabia plays a key role in the region and in addressing the region's issues. In a meeting with reporters at the headquarters of the British Foreign Office last night, he explained that the bilateral cooperation between the two countries receives great interest of the two countries' governments and covers all fields, especially combating terrorism, stabilizing the global oil market and developing educational and cultural cooperation as well as issues of concern to the region, including the Palestinian issue, Iraq, Lebanon and Iran. He praised the recent convening of the World Conference on Dialogue at the invitation of the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques King Abdullah bin Abdulaziz Al Saud in the Spanish capital, Madrid. The British ambassador confirmed that such a conference enriches dialogue among followers of religions and promotes world faith inter-relations, noting that "Islam has nothing to do with terrorism" and "we distinguish between Islam and Islamic groups which adopt violence". He added that such a dialogue is not about our affiliations of religions, but on what brings us together, the values and tolerance we are sharing and our endeavor to remove the misunderstanding among the followers of all religions, hoping that further initiatives on dialogue will come to reality in the future. He praised the Saudi-British cooperation in the field of combating terrorism. "There is a very excellent cooperation between the two countries, in the field of information exchange and experts' visits as well as training or technical tests", he said citing DNA tests. He added that the Government of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia had succeeded in their quest to stop home financing of those groups, rejecting allegations that terror groups in some foreign countries are being financed from inside the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. --More
