US delays religious freedom report for on-site inspection of Saudi Arabia

The United States has delayed the release of a report on international religious freedom to allow a senior envoy to visit Saudi Arabia for an on-site inspection, State Department officials said.

The annual report was to have been presented to Congress before the end of the last fiscal year on September 30, but the department asked for and received approval from lawmakers to postpone its release until the envoy, John Hanford, completed his trip to Saudi Arabia, the officials said.

Hanford, the US ambassador at-large for international religious freedom, wrapped up his three-day visit on Tuesday but it was not immediately clear when the report would be released, the officials said.

"We asked Congress for additional time so Hanford could personally go to Saudi before actually releasing the final conclusions," one official said.

The officials could not say what the exact purpose of Hanford's visit was, but there have been growing calls from human rights groups, lawmakers and conservative Christians for Saudi Arabia to be designated a "country of particular concern" for its restrictive religious laws.

Previous reports have been intensely critical of Saudi Arabia for its restrictive religious laws, but Washington has repeatedly refused to place the country on the blacklist which can lead to US sanctions.

Such designations are generally announced in March after a thorough review of the religious freedom report.

This past March, the State Department said Saudi Arabia had come "very close" to being designated a "country of particular concern" along with China, Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, North Korea and Sudan.

"It's a country that, based on the guidelines of the law, came very close to the threshold for being listed," spokesman Richard Boucher said, explaining why Secretary of State Colin Powell had not heeded the calls for Saudi Arabia to be blacklisted.

"There is no religious freedom in Saudi Arabia," he allowed.

"However, it was the recommendation of all the experts involved ... that we look for ways of working with the Saudi government to try to take advantage of any opportunities there might be to improve the state of religious freedom," Boucher said.

Powell's decision was met with dismay particularly from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a government appointed advisory panel, which said it was "deeply disappointed" by the move.

At the time, the decision was seen by some as a concession to Saudi Arabia when the United States was seeking Riyadh's support for the war against Iraq.

The State Department adamently denied those charges and said the decision to not include Saudi Arabia on the blacklist was due to calls for religious tolerance by the country's de facto leader, Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.