The summit of the League of Arab States last week was a showcase for Saudi Arabia's emergence as leader of those nations and for further definition of the Saudis' role and positions as they relate to the United States.

It is generally wise policy for the United States to encourage the leaders of a region to take responsibility for what happens there. In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia is a good candidate for the role. Since World War II it has been an American ally in the region, second only to Israel in the closeness of its relations with the United States.

As a monarchy it is fundamentally conservative and responsible in its approach to regional issues, and is in principle compatible with the U.S. approach to Mideast issues. Saudi Arabia is also financially sound, with the world's largest oil reserves, and sometimes inclined to intervene in the market to stabilize prices by adjusting its production levels.

The problem for the United States is that the Saudis, led by King Abdullah, are now taking aim at two major U.S. policies in the Middle East. The first is the Iraq war, stretching into its fifth year, which King Abdullah has called illegal. He has joined both houses of Congress, supported by a majority of the American people, in calling for the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq.

The king's second target is the relatively inactive role of the United States during the six years of the Bush administration in seeking a resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The king would say that U.S. passivity and ineffectiveness have led to an uncritical acceptance of Israel's policy of walling off Palestinian areas, not controlling settler activities in the West Bank and seeking to curb Palestinian and other opposition to Israeli moves in Gaza, the West Bank and Lebanon.

Whatever one thinks of King Abdullah and the other 22 members of the Arab League, two refreshing developments emerged from the days surrounding the Riyadh summit.

The first is that the king revived his 2002 plan for a two-state resolution of the Israel-Palestine issue. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert embraced it Friday as a "revolutionary change in outlook," though he rejected the return of Palestinian refugees. The second is the king urged the Arabs to take responsibility for developments in their region rather than sit back and then lament that someone else -- the Americans, the United Nations, whoever -- hasn't solved their problems.

This turn toward autonomy surfaced two weeks ago when King Abdullah canceled out of a White House dinner to have been given in his honor on April 17. Such new Saudi activism, for better or worse, constitutes something of a declaration of independence from the United States.