Riyadh - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad arrived
Monday in the Muslim holy city of Medina to perform the hajj at the
invitation of the King of Saudi Arabia.
Ahmadinejad is the first president of the Islamic Republic of Iran
to be officially invited by Saudi Arabia to perform the annual Muslim
pilgrimage.
The Iranian president has visited the kingdom twice since he took
office in 2005.
The pilgrimage in Mecca and Medina - Islam's holiest cities - had
in the past reflected periodical tensions between the largest Shiite
Muslim state and the conservative Sunni kingdom.
Fears of infectious revolutionary ideas coming from the Islamic
Republic that had toppled the Shah regime gripped the kingdom in the
last decades.
Saudi Arabia with a Shiite minority living in the eastern province
also fears the growing political clout of Iran in the Middle East.
Tensions between both countries reached their peak in 1987 when
hundreds of people, many of them Iranian pilgrims, died in clashes
with Saudi security forces during the hajj.
Anti-Shiite religious propaganda openly expressed in Saudi media
and during the annual pilgrimage has been a cause for concern in
Iran.
But both countries have been seeking cooperation to end political
crises in Lebanon and Iraq, where Tehran and Riyadh have been
jockeying for positions of power.
The Iranian president was invited to attend the Doha summit of the
Gulf Cooperation Council - a Gulf Arab alliance - in December,
signalling a thaw in relations between Saudi Arabia, the council's
powerhouse, and Iran.
© 2007 dpa - Deutsche Presse-Agentur 
USA
Your Talkback on this Story