Bush from Cairo Urges Syria, Iran to Stop Meddling in Lebanon
U.S. President George Bush told Syria and Iran on Wednesday to stop “interfering” in Lebanon”s affairs and urged the country to hold presidential elections.
Bush voiced hope OPEC will increase oil output to combat high world prices, after his talks with King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia, the world”s top crude producer.
“The president said there”s a hope that as a result of these conversations that OPEC would be encouraged to authorize an increase in production,” White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said on Wednesday after Bush arrived in Egypt from Riyadh.
“He says that the king says that he understands the situation,” Perino told reporters traveling with Bush on his eight-day tour of the region, which wraps up on Wednesday in Egypt.
“He”s worried about high oil prices and how they can negatively affect economies around the world.”
During his two-day visit to OPEC kingpin Saudi Arabia, Bush had said that he planned to discuss with the monarch “the fact that oil prices are very high, which is tough on our economy.”
The United States is facing recession fears at home after prices surged to a record 100 dollars at the start of the year and the state of the economy has been a key issue in the campaign for the November presidential election.
“The president reiterated the issue of there being tight supply and very high and rising demand, not just in America, but around the world, especially in India and China,” Perino said.
But OPEC Secretary General Abdullah al-Badri told AFP that high oil prices were not caused by a shortage of oil supplies and that other factors were to blame.
“Let me be clear, the high prices which we are witnessing are not because of any shortage of crude oil in the market,” Badri said in a statement emailed to AFP.
Badri is currently on his first visit to the tiny Mediterranean island of Cyprus and is due to address the Nicosia chamber of commerce on Wednesday.
Bush”s comments on Tuesday urging action by oil producers had an immediate impact on world oil prices, which continued lower on Wednesday with New York”s main futures contract, light sweet crude for delivery in February, down 48 cents to 91.42 dollars per barrel in Asian trade.
The 13-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries is due to meet in Vienna on February 1 under pressure to calm prices after shrugging off calls to increase output at its last meeting in December.
After Bush”s comments Tuesday, Saudi Arabia”s Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi had declared: “We will raise production when the market justifies it, this is our policy.”
In December, OPEC left its daily crude output quota unchanged at 27.25 million barrels despite strong speculation that the cartel would slash output by 500,000 barrels a day as gesture to calm fears that higher energy prices might dampen global growth.
Saudi Arabia is the number one oil exporter and sits atop the world”s largest proven oil reserves — 261.2 billion barrels, or more than a quarter of the global total.
It produces around nine million barrels of oil per day (bpd), but the figure varies at different times.