Saudi king calls for new interfaith dialogue

Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah attends a cabinet meeting in Riyadh March 24, 2008. King Abdullah plans to launch an effort at dialogue between Islam, Christianity and Judaism to help end inter-religious tension, Saudi media said on Tuesday.

RIYADH (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's King Abdullah plans to launch an effort at dialogue between Islam, Christianity and Judaism to help end inter-religious tension, Saudi media said on Tuesday.

State television showed the octogenarian king telling a forum in Riyadh that he would hold meetings with Muslims around the world to build a consensus for a new dialogue with Christians and Jews.

"I want to call for conferences between the religions to protect humanity from folly," he said in a speech where he spoke positively of his meeting last year with Pope Benedict.

"I wanted to visit the Vatican and I did and I thank him. He met me in a meeting I will not forget, a meeting of one human being with another. I suggested this idea," he said.

He said he had secured support of Saudi clerics over the past two years for his idea. The reports, also carried in the daily newspaper Asharq al-Awsat, did not say which clerics.

Conservative Saudi Arabia champions a hardline form of Sunni Islam known as Wahhabism and many Wahhabi clerics regard even fellow Shi'ite Muslims as heretics.

Followers of other faiths are forbidden to build public houses of worship.

King Abdullah has led the Saudi government's campaign against al Qaeda militants who turned their attention on Saudi Arabia in 2003, launching a violent campaign against the U.S.-allied royal family.

The king is regarded as a reformer, although diplomats say clerics and their allies have been resisting his plans for reforms including a loosening of strict social and religious customs.

The Vatican, which wants Saudi Arabia to allow Christians to worship freely, runs its own interfaith dialogue with Muslim clerics.

(Reporting by Andrew Hammond; Editing by Richard Balmforth)