Maxime Verhagen, Dutch Foreign Minister, on Tuesday hailed the Kingdom's respect of human rights and women's rights. Verhagen was addressing a joint press conference here with Prince Saud Al-Faisal, Foreign Minister. Saudi Arabia, Prince Saud said, considers human rights as part of its beliefs and not for proving good conduct adding that human rights in Islam are a basic element of life. Prince Saud said the Kingdom is currently carrying out ambitious development programs and utilizing most of its reserves in these programs. Kingdom's ambitious plans, he said, attracted G20's attention for their expected positive impact on stimulating demand and attracting companies and international institutions to contribute to the existing development. Prince Saud said it hoped this opportunity will increase the number of Saudi-Dutch joint projects. Already 73 companies are working in the sectors of investment, building, construction, transport, communications, industry and other fields. Prince Saud said that one of the most important fields of Saudi-Dutch cooperation is fighting terrorism since the participation of the Netherlands in the international conference on fighting terrorism hosted by Riyadh in 2005. Prince Saud stressed the importance of combining security efforts to fight terrorism in all its forms and combat fanatical and extremist thoughts. On discussions with his Dutch counterpart, Prince Saud said the two dealt with several political issue, including the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He said he stressed that solving this conflict will greatly contribute to solving a number of problems suffered by the Mideast region. Prince Saud appreciated the role of the Netherlands and the European Union in helping the Palestinians and lifting their humanitarian suffering. Prince Saud stressed Saudi support for Yemen and its stability and unity. He also stressed Saudi commitment to the support announced by the recent meeting of the Friends of Pakistan. On UAE reservation on basing the GCC central bank in Riyadh, Prince Saud said: “We want to know exactly the areas of this reservation and how we can remove them. We continue discussion and we hope that the joint will to establish this bank will prevail.”
