Jeddah, Feb 16 (DPA) US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton met Tuesday with the General Secretary of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference (OIC) Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu in Jeddah.
Clinton told reporters after the behind-closed-doors meeting that they had agreed on a plan to support joint action between the US and the OIC. This is the first visit by a US Secretary of State to the OIC’s headquarters in Saudi Arabia.

US President Barack Obama announced at the weekend the appointment of a special envoy, Rashad Hussain, to the OIC. Obama said Hussain was an accomplished lawyer and a close and trusted member of the White House staff who knows the Koran by heart.

Clinton arrived in Saudi Arabia Monday where she met with King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and his foreign minister, Prince Saud al-Faisal, in Riyadd.

Discussions there ranged across Afghanistan, Pakistan, as well as Yemen and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

“We also discussed Iran’s increasingly disturbing and destabilising actions,” she said late Monday in Riyadh.

“We are working actively with our regional and international partners in the context of our dual-track approach to prepare and implement new measures to convince Iran to change its course,” added Clinton.

Monday, during her visit to Doha, Clinton said she feared Iran is becoming a “military dictatorship” as the country’s Revolutionary Guard takes on more power.

She said the US would use diplomacy to put pressure on the Revolutionary Guard, which she said “is supplanting the government of Iran”.

Tuesday, Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki responded saying that militarised US policies in Afghanistan, Iraq and Lebanon and the killing of innocent civilians “were real symbols of military dictatorship”.