9/11 law can affect ties with Gulf: US official

riyadh — A United States law allowing victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks to sue Saudi Arabia could have “serious implications” for shared USGulf interests, a top Obama administration official said on Thursday.

US Treasury Secretary Jacob Lew made the comments at the opening of a meeting with finance ministers from the sixnation Gulf Cooperation Council, whose most powerful member is Saudi Arabia.

The US Congress voted overwhelmingly in September to override President Barack Obama’s veto of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA).

JASTA allows attack survivors and relatives of terrorism victims to pursue cases against foreign governments in US federal court and to demand compensation if those governments are proven to bear some responsibility for attacks on US soil.

Lew said JASTA “would enact broad changes in long-standing international law regarding sovereign immunity that, if applied globally, could have serious implications for our shared interests”.

Saudi Arabia and its Gulf allies have also expressed concern about erosion of sovereign immunity, a principle sacrosanct in international relations.

But the potential implications go far beyond the Gulf. Some British, French and Dutch lawmakers have threatened retaliatory legislation to allow their courts to pursue US officials, threatening a global legal domino effect.

Riyadh and Washington have a decades-old relationship based on the exchange of American security for Saudi oil.

Lew later met the Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques, King Salman bin Abdulaziz, to discuss economic and financial cooperation between the region and the US, the official Saudi Press Agency said. —

JaSta would enact broad changes ... that, if applied globally, could have serious implications for our shared interests

Jacob Lew, US Treasury Secretary