Posted on 03/28/2002 6:13:49 AM PST by Thinkin' Gal
BEIRUT (AFP) — The number two of the Saudi delegation to the Arab summit here, Prince Nawwaf Ben Abdul Aziz, was in “stable condition” after undergoing an operation on Wednesday for a brain haemorrhage, medical sources said.
Prince Nawwaf, 70, “was operated on with success and his condition is stable,” one medical source said.
They said the prince, Saudi Arabia's intelligence chief and a former interior minister, had fallen unconscious and was rushed to the American University Hospital.
The prince had been attending the opening session of the two-day Arab summit.
“A Magnetic Resonance Image (MRI) has shown that he suffered a brain haemorrhage and he was immediately moved to the emergency unit,” the medical source said.
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah Ben Abdul Aziz “came to visit him and proposed to move him abroad, but we explained to him that it was preferable to operate on him in Beirut,” he said.
Nawwaf, a son of the late Saudi founder King Abdul Aziz Ben Saud like the current king and crown prince, is a veteran on the Saudi political scene.
Saudi dissident Saad Al Faqih, who resides in London, recently described Nawwaf as a confidante to Abdullah, who has served as the kingdom's de facto ruler since 1995 when King Fahd suffered a stroke.
Nawwaf replaced Sheikh Turki Al Faisal as intelligence chief in August 2001. Faisal headed the intelligence service in the kingdom for several decades.
Turki stepped down last year at his own request, according to a royal decree, but his resignation came after a series of attacks on Westerners in the kingdom and a clash on the Saudi-Iraq border which left two dead.
Nawwaf's appointment looked to bolster Prince Abdullah's power within the royal family.
A recent profile of Nawwaf by the official Saudi Press Agency described the prince as regularly “accompanying Abdullah on his ... official trips abroad.”
Nawwaf has served Saudi Arabia as a head of the national guard, the royal court and was appointed adviser to the late King Faisal in 1968.
No...he and Abdullah were laughing so hard at the world going along with their 'peaace proposal' that the stupid SOB burst a vessel. What a shame.
That was the first thing that caught my eye too.
If he'd gone to a Saudi hospital we'd probably be reading his obituary.
He is still breathing, nothing ever go right for me.
Stupid sand flea.
Osama Bin Laden went to an American hospital also last July where he was visited by the CIA. The American gov't certainly takes good care of its friends and partners, doesn't it?
I ain't accusin' ye of no ill intent, but the word fico ..................
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