A visit by the former Iraqi prime minister and head of the secular al-Iraqiya alliance, Iyad Allawi, to the oil-rich Saudi Arabia has provoked fierce controversy in his home country.

The Saturday visit by one of Iraq’s most prominent candidates in next month’s parliamentary election comes amid fears that Riyadh would incite sectarian violence in Iraq, with the Saudis being under suspicion of funding armed groups in Iraq, Arab-language Nahrainnet news website reported.

Allawi’s well-publicized visit to Riyadh, where he met with Saudi King Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz and Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Meqrin bin Abdul Aziz has raised eyebrows, especially as Saudi politicians have maintained low-level contact with Iraqi counterparts since the 2003 US-led invasion.

The meeting comes while Saudi King Abdullah has widely avoided meeting with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki in recent years.

Nahrainnet, quoting unnamed Saudi officials, reported that Allawi’s high-level meetings in Riyadh could prove to be “dangerous” for Iraq and the Shias during and after the elections.

Saudi authorities have told Allawi that they have allocated “billions of dollars to buy votes in Iraq’s upcoming elections” with hat aim of securing parliamentary seats for “Liberals” and “atheists,” Nahrainnet quoted the officials as saying.

Iraq’s nationwide parliamentary elections in March, the first since 2003 in a fully sovereign Iraq, is seen as crucial to stability of the war-battered country.

White House National Security Adviser James Jones has met with Saudi King Abdullah as the Arab country is involved in a military intervention in Yemen.

Jones, arriving in Saudi Arabia on the first leg of a regional tour, “discussed a number of issues of mutual interest” with the King on Tuesday, the official SPA news agency announced, without offering further details.

Jones also met Saudi Defense Minister Crown Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz.

The meeting comes as Saudi Arabia and the US continue to lend military support to neighboring Yemen in support of its crackdown against the Shia Houthi fighters in north Yemen.

Jones’ Mideast tour of Saudi Arabia, Israel and Palestine, however, focuses mainly on the Israeli-Palestinian peace talks, deadlocked over Israel’s settlements.

The Palestinians insist that peace talks with Tel Aviv cannot begin until Israel freezes all settlement construction in the occupied West Bank and East Jerusalem Al-Quds.

The Palestinians consider the Israeli-occupied land, home to the Al-Aqsa Mosque – the third most holy site of Islam – and the Dome of the Rock, as the capital of their homeland, fearing Israel’s continued settlement expansion on the land will ruin chances of establishing a viable Palestinian state.

Israel’s ultra-Orthodox Jews, on the other hand, fiercely oppose admitting the Palestinian identity of the city, claiming a “God-given right” to Jerusalem Al-Quds as their “eternal capital.”

The Palestinians are also frustrated with US President Barack Obama’s shift in policy that now allows the expansion of Israeli settlements in the West Bank, labeled by many countries as illegal.

Recently, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged the Palestinians to resume peace talks without any preconditions.

Britain has witnessed major anti-Israel demonstrations, as several hundred pro-Palestinian protesters rallied in front of the Israeli embassy in London.

The demonstrators condemned the deadly Israeli offensive and continued Israeli siege of the impoverished Gaza Strip, demanding an end to the ‘inhuman’ blockade.

“We continue to be outraged at the attacks on Gaza and the crimes against humanity that was committed there,” Glen Secker from Jews for Justice for Palestinians said on Sunday.

The protesters who chanted “end the siege now”, also held banners naming Saudi King Abdullah, Palestinian Authority chief Mahmoud Abbas and Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak as accomplices in the massacre of Gazans.

A group of UK parliamentarians also took part in the protests, voicing concern for the Gaza siege.

“The Israeli ambassador to London has demanded that our law should be changed. But I should point out that it is not for him to demand how we should change our law,” Labor MP Martin Linton told Press TV.

Linton was pointing to a recent arrest warrant issued for former Israeli Prime minister Tzipi Livni in the British court system.

The warrant was hastily withdrawn after an extraordinary intervention from the Foreign Office and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown himself.

Pro-Gaza protests were also staged in over a dozen other cities across Britain this week, amid tight security.

The latest development comes as the Viva Palestina convoy made its way to the blockaded strip, despite hindrances.

The third international convoy, which departed from London on December 5, is made up of international volunteers who have raised hundreds of thousands of pounds in their local communities to pay for ambulances, minibuses, vans, and lorries to fill them with medical and other aid that is desperately needed in Gaza.

The Viva Palestina convoy was organized to direct the world’s attention to the fact that Israeli war criminals committed horrendous crimes in Gaza as well as to the courageous Palestinian resistance.

Israel’s three-week offensive against Gaza in December 2008 and January 2009 left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead, more than half of them civilians, according to medical sources.

The Israeli assault also led to the destruction of schools, mosques, houses as well as UN compounds, inflicting $1.6 billion damage on the Gaza economy.

Saudi King Abdullah has reportedly signed a state decree rewarding families of the soldiers killed in raids on Houthi resistance fighters in Yemen.

The Saudi king’s latest directive requires the government to award a medal of honor and a sum of USD 266,000 to each family of soldiers killed in cross-border assaults against the Houthi fighters, IRNA reported.

The edict will also allow the recruitment of the immediate male relatives of every fallen soldier in the kingdom’s army.

The Saudis joined an assault on the Yemeni group on November 4 over allegations that Houthis killed a Saudi border patrol. The kingdom has pledged to assist the Yemeni government in uprooting the fighters through an intensified blitz and shelling.

Saudi Arabia’s move came after the Yemeni government launched its ‘Operation Scorched Earth’ to crush the Houthi resistance in the mountainous north.

The offensive has so far left thousands of civilians displaced and scores of others killed.

Syria and Saudi Arabia have urged politicians in Lebanon to reach consensus and form a national unity government.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and Saudi King Abdullah underlined the importance of an agreement amongst the Lebanese, and said on Thursday that a national unity government in Lebanon will bring stability, unity and strength to the country, SANA reported.

The two leaders were speaking in Damascus at the end of the Saudi monarch’s first visit to Syria since succeeding the throne in 2005.

The call comes while, Lebanese Prime Minister-designate Saad Hariri has been struggling to form a cabinet for months, since being tasked with installing a government following the June 7 elections.