SAUDI ARABIA.

Inquire · Offered by Peter Harrington

Pair of press photographs. Rare prints of Associated Press photographs documenting the changing face of Saudi foreign policy in 1953, during the final months of Ibn Sa'ud's reign and a few short years before the Suez crisis. The first image captures a meeting between Prince - later King - Faisal and President Eisenhower in Washington, while the second shows Ibn Sa'ud meeting Emperor Haile Selassie (d. 1975) of Ethiopia.After Eisenhower assumed office in 1953, he and his Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles (also seen here) were keen to continue the flourishing relationship between their country and Saudi Arabia which had been cemented during the presidency of Franklin Roosevelt. On 2 March of that year, Prince Faisal, at this point Saudi minister for foreign affairs, was accompanied to the White House by the chief of his cabinet, Ibrahim Suleiman, and his country's ambassador extraordinary to the United States, Asad al-Faqih, who had signed the UN constitution on Saudi's behalf when it was drafted in 1945. Ibn Sa'ud's brief trip to Ethiopia was made in July 1953. Haile Selassie met him in a special marquee which had been erected at Addis Ababa airport, and the two monarchs sat on lavish thrones. The state visit aimed to strengthen Saudi-Ethiopian relations as both nations faced the common adversary of Nasserism. The visit laid the ground for improved bilateral relations throughout the 1950s: King Sa'ud visited Addis in 1957, and Haile Selassie travelled to Riyadh in 1960.

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