Trade Minister Takashi Fukaya, in an informal meeting Wednesday, asked Ali Ibrahim al-Nuaimi, the Saudi Arabian petroleum minister, to consider the latest proposal put forward by Tokyo-based Arabian Oil Co. in an effort to have its oil drilling rights renewed. Describing his Tokyo lunch meeting with the Saudi minister as "friendly," Fukaya said, "although we kept negotiations out of our meeting today, I asked the minister to consider meeting Arabian Oil's president, who is offering a new proposal." Keiichi Konaga, Arabian Oil president, flew to Saudi Arabia later in the day for further talks on the issue. Arabian Oil's rights to the Khafji oil field, close to the neutral zone between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, expire on Feb. 27. Konaga is expected to formally convey his firm's offer to build a 1,400 km rail link, the issue on which earlier talks had foundered, during his meeting with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz Al Saud. Last month in Riyadh, Fukaya rejected Saudi Arabia's request that the Japanese government build the railway, saying it would be impossible to gain the support of the Japanese public for the project. Instead, he conveyed Tokyo's offer of an investment package worth 800 billion yen, including preferential loans of 140 billion yen, to help Riyadh construct the railway. In the informal meeting, held at a Tokyo soba restaurant, Al-Nuaimi told Fukaya that bilateral relations between the two countries will not be damaged by the stalled negotiations. Al-Nuaimi was in Tokyo on Tuesday and Wednesday to attend the Symposium on Pacific Energy Cooperation 2000 and to meet with top officials of Japanese oil firms and trading companies.
