Cheney, Abdullah find common ground on oil

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RIYADH, Mar 22 (AFP): US Vice President Dick Cheney and Saudi King Abdullah discussed chaotic energy markets here, focusing primarily on medium- and long-term ways to promote stability, a US official said Saturday.
In meetings that also included Oil Minister Ali al-Nuaimi, there was "a lot of commonality in their assessment about the structural problems confronted by the global energy market now, and some discussion of probably the way forward," the official told reporters on condition of anonymity.
Cheney and his hosts discussed "the way forward, how we work together to try to stabilise the market and what can be done and what could be done shorter term, but probably more about what's necessary to do over the medium and longer term," the official told reporters.
Over nearly five hours, Cheney and the king also discussed "Iran, Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Afghanistan, Pakistan, energy, Israeli-Palestinian issues, some bilateral questions before us," the official said.
They had "very warm meetings, there's obviously a lot of trust and friendship in these meetings, large areas of agreement clearly, in terms of how they assess a lot of the major challenges that confront both the United States and Saudi Arabia in the region.
"So I think on the whole very very productive," the official said. "I can't tell you much about the conversations themselves, these are especially confidential and private conversations.