Senator Says He May Back Bill Exposing Saudis to 9/11 Lawsuits

Senator Mitch McConnell, left, the majority leader, and Senator John Cornyn, Republican of Texas, leave a Senate policy luncheon on Tuesday. Mr. McConnell has declined to give his full support to the Sept. 11 bill, saying he would need to study the measure more carefully. 

CreditZach Gibson/The New York Times

WASHINGTON — A bill opposed by the Obama administration that would expose Saudi Arabia to legal jeopardy for any role in the Sept. 11 attacks appeared to gain momentum on Tuesday when the senator holding it up said he would be open to supporting it.

Senator Lindsey Graham, Republican of South Carolina, said in an interview on Tuesday that he would drop his opposition to the bill — predicting it could pass the Senate next week — if the sponsors of the legislation agreed to changes that he believed were important to protect American interests abroad. He did not specify what changes he was requesting.

“The goal is to bring people to justice who have been involved in terrorism,” Mr. Graham said. But he added, “I don’t want Americans to be held liable because of one bad actor in some embassy somewhere.”

Mr. Graham was an original co-sponsor of the bill, but has tried to block the legislation in recent days as his concerns grew about possible unintended consequences.

Obama administration officials have been vigorously lobbying against the Sept. 11 bill, which has broad bipartisan support, arguing that Americans overseas could be put in legal jeopardy if other nations were to retaliate and strip them of immunity in foreign courts. But the measure is gaining support in Congress at a time when many lawmakers are demanding greater scrutiny of Washington’s alliance with the kingdom, which for decades has been a cornerstone of American foreign policy in the Middle East and once the subject of little examination on Capitol Hill.

“Very bluntly, they no longer have us in an energy straight jacket,” said Senator Richard Blumenthal, Democrat of Connecticut, referring to growing domestic oil production that has made the United States less reliant on the Saudis. He added that the American government now knows more about Saudi Arabia’s historical funding of extremist groups and that “Americans are also increasingly concerned about Saudi Arabia’s human rights record.”

President Obama arrives in Riyadh on Wednesday for meetings with King Salman and other top Saudi officials. It is not known whether the legislation will be discussed during those talks. The president has said he will veto the bill in its current form.

In an interview with CBS News on Monday, he said, “If we open up the possibility that individuals and the United States can routinely start suing other governments, then we are also opening up the United States to being continually sued by individuals in other countries.”

In an unusual alliance, some Republicans, even those fiercely critical of the administration’s policies in the Middle East, seemed to agree with the White House on the legislation. On Tuesday, Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, the majority leader, declined to give his full support of the bill, saying he would need to study the measure more carefully.

“The pushback on that is coming from the Republicans,” said Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the minority leader.

But support from other Republicans and many Democrats seems to be giving the bill momentum.

“Certainly they have been a partner in many ways and that has been longstanding,” said Senator Bob Corker, Republican of Tennessee and the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. “On the other hand we understand that the whole Wahhabi effort emanated from there and that alone is an issue,” he said, referring to the radical strain of Islam practiced in the kingdom.

But prospects for the bill are more uncertain in the House. In a news conference on Tuesday, Speaker Paul D. Ryan, who recently visited Saudi Arabia, said he would review the bill but needed to make sure “we’re not making mistakes with our allies.”

The Saudi government, which has long denied any involvement in the Sept. 11 attacks, has warned that it might liquidate hundreds of billions of dollars worth of American assets if the bill becomes law. Adel al-Jubeir, the Saudi foreign minister, told lawmakers and Obama administration officials during a visit to Washington last month that such a move could be necessary to avoid the assets being frozen in court cases brought by families of Sept. 11 victims.

Those cases, some of which have tried to hold members of the Saudi royal family and Saudi charities liable for what the plaintiffs allege was financial support for terrorism, have been largely stymied because of a 1976 law that gives foreign nations broad immunity from American lawsuits. The current legislation would amend the law, allowing for nations to be sued in American courts if they are found to have played any role in terrorist attacks that killed Americans on home soil.

There is little question that relations with Saudi Arabia have frayed in recent years, in part because of a perception in Riyadh that the Obama administration has abandoned its traditional allies in the Middle East. But some experts said that the irony of the growing anti-Saudi sentiment in Congress is that the Saudi government in recent years has scaled back its support for extremist groups in the Middle East.

Ilan Goldenberg, a fellow at the Center for New American Security and a former State Department official, said that in Syria in particular the Saudis have been more disciplined than other nations — most notably Qatar and Turkey — about giving arms to militant rebel groups like the Qaeda-linked Nusra Front.

Still, Mr. Goldenberg said, Wahhabism is a bedrock of Saudi society and the kingdom is never likely to abandon it.

“It’s like trying to get Pakistan to change its position on India,” he said. “No amount of American scrutiny is going to change that.”

(Source : nytimes.com)

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