Saudi Arabia rebuke over US claim

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Saudi Arabia has demanded that the US retract a claim that King Abdullah met Israeli President Shimon Peres in 2008, in a rare rebuke towards its ally.

An unnamed Saudi official said the claim by US Under Secretary at the State Department, William Burns, was "completely false and fabricated".

Mr Burns said this week King Abdullah and Mr Peres met at a UN interfaith conference in New York last November.

Saudi Arabia and Israel do not have diplomatic relations.

The unnamed Saudi official was quoted by Saudi Arabia's state-run SPA news agency.

The official said that the US state department had to "deny the claim and provide clarification for the reasons behind such fabrication that does not serve the relations between the two friendly countries".

Riyadh has always denied media reports of meetings between Saudi and Israeli officials, which some analysts say could damage the kingdom's credibility in the Arab world.

In 2002, Saudi Arabia proposed a peace initiative which offered Israel full diplomatic recognition if the Jewish state returned Arabs lands it seized in 1967.