President Barack Obama met with King Salman on Wednesday at the start of a visit made tense by recent US overtures toward Iran and a new push by some US politicians to declassify 28 pages believed to document Riyadh's involvement in 9/11. Obama arrived in Riyadh for a Persian Gulf summit on Wednesday and will remain in the Saudi capital for little more than 24 hours before he moves on to London and Hanover in Germany. The Saudi monarch greeted Obama under crystal chandeliers in the grand foyer at Erga Palace, after which the two leaders slowly made their way to a reception room as the smell of incense wafted in the air. The two men offered each other polite smiles as they sat for pictures at the start of their two-hour private meeting. Obama and King Salman discussed the need to support a political transition away from President Bashar al-Assad in Syria as well as the conflicts in Yemen and Iraq, the White House said, while Obama also raised human rights concerns. US Defense Secretary Ash Carter and CIA Director John Brennan are among the officials accompanying Obama. Carter, meeting with defence ministers from the Gulf nations, pressed them to provide more economic and political support to Iraq. The visit comes amid rising tensions in US-Saudi relations, with the Sunni Wahhabi kingdom – under an increasingly bellicose Salman – opposed to Washington's overtures to its archrival, Iran, which culminated in a nuclear deal last year. A decreasing US reliance on Saudi oil has further complicated a relationship once considered too important to test. Realpolitik concerns are no longer sufficient to silence the calls for accountability from the families of 9/11 victims and the US public at large. Shortly before Obama boarded his plane for the Saudi Kingdom late on Tuesday, the majority leader of the US Senate, Republican Mitch McConnell, said he was considering a bill that would allow US citizens to sue the Saudi government over its alleged links to the September 11 attacks. "I'm still looking at it," McConnell told reporters. 'The 28 pages' Secured behind a locked door in a secret vault on Capitol Hill in the heart of Washington, DC, sits a 28-page document that only a small group of people have been permitted to see. Members of Congress may go into the room and read them – but they cannot take notes or be accompanied by members of their staff when doing so. Such is the veil of secrecy behind the final chapter of the 9/11 investigation report by the US Senate Select Committee on Intelligence. The 28 pages documenting Saudi support for the 9/11 hijackers were redacted in 2003, when the 838-page report was released, due to national security concerns. And more than a decade later, that piece of the investigation into the worst terrorist attack on US soil is still – very controversially – under wraps. The clamour to unseal the 28 pages grew louder ahead of Obama's Saudi trip, rejuvenated by an April 10 report on the respected US television magazine show "60 Minutes" that detailed the frustration among senior US officials who have been pushing for the declassification over the past 13 years. These former and current officials include former Florida senator Bob Graham, who is chairman of the Senate Select Committee and co-chairman of the inquiry, and former CIA director Porter Goss, who was also a co-chairman of the inquiry. Two days after the "60 Minutes" broadcast, Graham told Fox News that the White House had informed him that a decision on whether to declassify the documents would be made within two months. White House Press Secretary Josh Earnest told reporters last week that the 28 pages were the subject of an intelligence community "classification review". Asked about any alleged ties the Saudi government might have to 9/11, Earnest cited the 9/11 Commission's findings that there was no evidence the Saudi government nor senior Saudi officials had funded al Qaeda. Riyadh has long maintained that support for the mainly Saudi hijackers did not come from the government. Rumours have long circulated that the 28 pages detail funding for the 9/11 al Qaeda hijackers – not necessarily from the Saudi government, but from wealthy Saudis, including members of the royal family. In the "60 Minutes" report, Graham was asked if he believed support for the 19 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia. "Substantially," Graham replied. CBS reporter Steve Kroft pushed the former senator further: "And when we say, ‘The Saudis,' you mean the government... rich people in the country? Charities?" "All of the above," said Graham. A shifting alliance US government officials insist that the redacted pages do not contain anything the public does not already know. But advocates for the declassification argue that, if that were true, the Obama administration would have no reason to keep the pages from going public. They also note that the redaction probably made sense under former president George W. Bush, given the close personal relationship between the Bush family and the Saudi royals. But the traditional Washington-Riyadh alliance has shifted dramatically in recent years. And although Obama has made three previous visits to Saudi Arabia during his presidency, both sides know the dynamics of the US-Saudi relationship are changing. A report entitled "The Obama Doctrine" in US monthly "The Atlantic" illustrates the extent to which the current US president is willing to test the old ties that bound Washington to the Sunni Arab world. The Saudis – currently involved in a military campaign in neighbouring Yemen and a proxy conflict with Iran that exasperates Washington – have appeared increasingly truculent. Eyebrows were raised last year when King Salman decided not to join a summit of Gulf leaders hosted by Obama at his Camp David country residence.
