Ahmadinejad of Iran & Saudi King Abdullah meet in Riyadh

Saudi funds Sunnis and Iran funds Shias. The two who are fudning the Iraq insurrgency met Saturday....I would have loved to be fly on the wall there....I wonder if they discussed Lebanon and Africa....

-Shimron

TEHRAN, IRAN - The leaders of rival regional powers Iran and Saudi Arabia are vowing to curb the sectarian strife that is increasingly defining conflict across the Middle East.

The pledge to calm tensions, as Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad made his first official visit to meet Saudi King Abdullah in Riyadh on Saturday, illustrates the growing regional alarm over Shiite-Sunni violence. Sectarian bloodshed has soared in Iraq – often at the hands of allies and coreligionists of these rival nations – and is threatening stability in Lebanon.

Yet while both leaders prefer to blame outside actors for the increase in sectarian tension – their promises to support peace notwithstanding – elements in Iran and Saudi Arabia have helped to finance sectarian militias in Iraq and, in the case of the Saudis, engaged in heated sectarian rhetoric. Still the leaders stated that the "greatest danger" to Islam is the "attempt to fuel the fire of strife between Sunni and Shiite Muslims" and called for unity, the official Saudi Press Agency reported.

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