‘Saudi Arabia has options if US walks from N-deal’

WASHINGTON: Saudi Arabia has international partners it can work with if the United States walks away from a potential deal on nuclear power technology over concerns about nuclear proliferation, Khalid al-Falih, the kingdom’s energy minister, said in an interview on Thursday.

“If the US is not with us, they will lose the opportunity to influence the program in a positive way,” Falih said after he and Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman met this week with President Donald Trump, Energy Secretary Rick Perry and other officials on a range of issues.

Perry has been quietly working with Saudi Arabia on a civilian nuclear agreement that could allow the kingdom to enrich uranium and reprocess plutonium, technologies that nonproliferation advocates worry could one day be covertly altered to produce fissile material for nuclear weapons. The kingdom is also in talks with companies from Russia, China, South Korea and other countries as the race to build two reactors in Saudi Arabia heats up. Saudi Arabia has said it needs nuclear power to move away from burning crude oil to generate electricity and to diversify its economy.

Earlier this month, its cabinet approved a national policy program that limits nuclear activities to peaceful purposes. Perry hopes Saudi Arabia will buy nuclear power technology from US companies, including Westinghouse, which went into Chapter 11 bankruptcy this year and abandoned plans to build two advanced AP1000 reactors in the United States.

“It will be natural for the United States to be with us and to provide us not only with technology, but to help us with the fuel cycle and the monitoring, and make sure we do it to the highest standard.” “But the kingdom has generous uranium resources it wants to develop.