Prince Bandar: Clinton Sought Secret Oil-Election Deal

Saudi ambassador to the U.S. Prince Bandar bin Sultan said Monday that ex-President Clinton sought a secret deal to keep oil prices low before the 2000 election, explaining that the request was nothing unusual.

"President Clinton asked us to keep the prices down in the year 2000," Bin Sultan told CNN's "Larry King Live," responding to a claim by Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward that the Bush administration made a similar request this year.

Bin Sultan said President Carter also made a request for lower oil prices to save his reelection bid in 1979, explaining that he did so "to avoid the [US's economic] malaise."

"We always want any president who is in office to be reelected," Bin Sultan explained, while stressing that his hope for lower oil prices was not a direct effort to influence the outcome of the U.S. election.

"This not our call. This is the American people's call," he insisted.

"We hoped that the oil prices will stay low, because that's good for America's economy, but more important, it's good for our economy and the international economy," Prince Bandar told CNN. "And this is nothing unusual."

On Monday, Democratic presidential candidate John Kerry decried Bush's "secret deal" with the Saudis for low oil prices, based on a claim in Bob Woodward's new book, "Plan of Attack."

"If, as Bob Woodward reports, it is true that gas supplies and prices in America are tied to the American election, tied to a secret White House deal, that is outrageous and unacceptable," Kerry complained in Florida.

Sen. Kerry has yet to issue a similar denunciation of the secret oil price deals sought from the Saudis by Presidents Clinton and Carter.

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