Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said in an interview published on Monday that ties with Saudi Arabia had passed through a "cloudy" period, but he hoped this month's Arab summit will help patch up differences.
Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah was enraged by the 2005 assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafik al-Hariri, a Saudi ally. "This relationship, like any Arab relationship, goes through cloudy patches, let's call it that, and recently there were clouds," Assad told the Saudi daily al-Jazirah.
"We hope the Arab summit will be a new departure between Syria and Saudi Arabia and between the Arabs in general," he said, adding he had good personal relations with King Abdullah stretching back over a decade.
