Obama in Saudi for talks overshadowed by mistrust

US President Barack Obama has sought to allay Riyadh's criticism of his policies on Syria and Iran, telling the Saudi king their two countries remain in lockstep on their strategic interests.
He also assured King Abdullah that the US "won't accept a bad deal" with Iran, as global powers negotiate a treaty reining in Tehran's controversial nuclear programme.
"The president underscored how much he values this strategic relationship", a senior US administration official said, after Obama met for some two hours with the king on a royal estate outside Riyadh.
In an interview aired on US television later yesterday, Obama defended his administration's decision not to use military force in Syria, saying that the United States has its limits.

The US leader's comments came in an interview taped ahead of his visit to Saudi Arabia, which was angered by his 11th-hour decision last year to pull back from strikes against the Syrian regime over its use of chemical weapons in the country's civil war.
"It is, I think, a false notion that somehow we were in a position to, through a few selective strikes, prevent the kind of hardship we've seen in Syria," Obama told broadcaster CBS in Rome.

"It's not that it's not worth it," he added. "It's that after a decade of war, the United States has limits."

"And it's not clear whether the outcome, in fact, would have turned out significantly better," he added.
Now in its fourth year, the bloody civil war has claimed more than 146,000 lives and displaced many others, causing a refugee crisis in the region.
Earlier, White House officials said part of the discussions would focus on ways to "empower" Syria's moderate opposition.
But officials shot down as untrue reports that the US administration was planning to give Riyadh a green light to ship man-portable air-defence weapons, known as MANPADs, to the beleaguered moderate Syrian opposition.