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By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Staff Writer
Wednesday, June 3, 2009; 8:09 AM

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia, June 3–American flags are hanging next to the green banner of the Saudi kingdom on the street-light poles of this desert capital, a celebratory nod to the arrival of President Obama, who on Wednesday landed here to begin a five-day tour through the Middle East and Europe.

Obama will hold a day of meetings with King Abdullah on Iran’s nuclear program and the dormant Israeli-Palestinian peace process, among other issues. It is his first presidential visit to the Arab Middle East.

At a tarmac welcoming ceremony, Obama was greeted by the 84-year-old Saudi leader. The two strode down a red carpet lined by ranks of Saudi soldiers, U.S. and Saudi flags flying taut in a brisk, dry wind. A military band then played the Star-Spangled Banner.

The leaders were then scheduled to travel to King Abdullah’s farm at Jenadriyah, not far from Riyadh. The king hosted a dinner there last year for then-President Bush featuring an Arabian horse show and a falconry exhibition.

This stop was a late addition to Obama’s itinerary, the centerpiece of which is his Thursday address in Cairo to the Islamic world.

It comes as Obama is pushing for early progress on Middle East peace efforts and reaching out to Iran’s leaders over their nuclear program - two major and intertwined foreign policy gambits that so far have yielded few results.

With its vast oil wealth and supreme religious importance in the Islamic world as the site of Mecca and Medina, Saudi Arabia has long been a leading Sunni Arab player in the region, an influence Abdullah has sought to deepen in recent years.

Abdullah has asserted Saudi diplomacy aggressively in Lebanon and in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. He was the first to propose broad Arab recognition of Israel in return for its withdrawal from all territory occupied in the 1967 Middle East War, and he has sought in the past to broker unity government agreements between rival Palestinian factions Hamas and Fatah.

Obama has suggested that Abdullah’s peace proposal, adopted by the Arab League in 2002 and now known as the Arab Peace Initiative, may serve as a way to revive talks between Israelis, Palestinians and Arab countries, only two of which now recognize the Jewish state.

After a meeting with Obama last month, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu indicated that he would welcome more regional participation in future Israeli-Palestinian negotiations. He said he “would like to broaden the circle of peace to include others in the Arab world, if we could.”

Those talks are being held up now by Palestinian concerns over Israeli settlement construction in the West Bank and Netanyahu’s refusal to endorse the creation of an independent Palestinian state as the best way to achieve peace.

The Obama administration may be taking more of an outside in view of the conflict, hoping a gesture from Arab nations such as this one might push Israel toward peace with the Palestinians.
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