WASHINGTON – It’s official. Saudi Arabia will not end its boycott of Israel despite its membership in the World Trade Organization, a body that prohibits such trade barriers between member states.

The Saudi ambassador to America told a luncheon at the Brookings Institution on Monday that his country’s primary boycott of Israel is a “matter of national sovereignty,” according to a transcript of the event provided to The New York Sun.

The press adviser to Prince Turki al-Faisal, Jamal Khashoggi, confirmed the ambassador’s statement yesterday. Mr. Khashoggi added that it is early to talk about bilateral trade between Saudi Arabia and Israel.”

The comments from the Saudi prince are significant because to date no senior member of the kingdom has said – on the record, at least – that the House of Saud will continue its boycott of Israel, a potentially serious violation of the rules of the WTO, which Riyadh joined in December.

Prince Turki’s remarks were so contentious that the Saudi Embassy requested that the question-and-answer session following his statement at Brookings be made retroactively off the record, according to a Brookings press assistant who responded to a query for the full transcript.

On one level, the ambassador’s comments contradict earlier agreements Saudi trade representatives made with their American counterparts to bring an end to the embargo, a condition of gaining American support for the Gulf state’s accession to the WTO. They also would appear to undercut the Bush administration’s policy of enticing Arab states with free trade agreements and WTO membership to end their boycott of the Jewish State.

Bahrain, Jordan, Egypt, Morocco, Oman, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates already allow some level of trade with Israel, though these arrangements are not always made public.

A spokesman for the office of the U.S. trade representative said yesterday that the decision to continue the boycott was not in keeping with the rules of the trade body. “In our view, maintaining the primary boycott of Israel is not consistent with Saudi Arabia’s commitment to extend full WTO treatment to all WTO members,” Stephen Norton said. He added, “We will continue to consult with Saudi officials on this.”

The chairman of the House subcommittee that oversees trade agreements, Clay Shaw, a Republican of Florida, said: “Saudi Arabia has rights and commitments to all of its fellow WTO members, including Israel. Upon entering the WTO, Saudi Arabia agreed to provide nondiscriminatory treatment to all WTO members. Therefore, I call on Saudi Arabia to live up to its obligations and end this boycott now.”

But Mr. Khashoggi, a cousin of the multimillionaire arms merchant Adnan Khashoggi, said he sees the situation differently. “For national security purposes, if we want to enforce a national boycott on the state of Qatar or Egypt, even though they are brotherly, neighborly countries, it is our right to do so,” he said. “So what we abolished is the secondary and tertiary boycott, but the primary boycott is within our rights.”

The Saudi secondary and tertiary boycott of Israel technically ended in 1995 when the Gulf Cooperation Council, of which Saudi Arabia is a member, pledged no longer to punish foreign companies and individuals that did business with Israel. Nonetheless, for Saudi Arabia, the policy of boycotting Israeli imports and not exporting goods to Israel remains in place. Indeed, earlier this spring the kingdom sent envoys to an Arab League meeting in Beirut to discuss boycott policy.

“The primary boycott is not illegal,” Mr. Khashoggi said. “Every country in the world can do this. If you are even in the WTO, you can have a dispute with a foreign country. This does not prevent you from having a certain boycott.”

A visiting law professor at the University of Chicago, Eugene Kontorovich, said this logic was specious. “In a state of nature, of course, you can boycott whatever country you want. But you waive those sovereign rights when you enter into treaties limiting them. Now the Saudis are under an obligation to provide most favored nation status to other WTO member countries,” he said.

Mr. Kontorovich, who has written extensively on the Saudi accession to the WTO, added that it was hypocritical for the Saudis, who complain so frequently about alleged Israeli violations of international law, to flagrantly violate the terms of the trade agreement they recently made.

“If there is to be international outrage about violations of international law in the case of Israel, you would think there would be outrage by this blatant violation of clear black letter international law,” he said.

So far, Israel’s Foreign Ministry and trade representatives have not taken steps to penalize Saudi Arabia for the boycott.

Mr. Khashoggi made clear yesterday that he failed to understand what the fuss was about. “Why do they make a big deal about it, these pro-Israelis?” he asked. “Even the Israeli government is not interested in direct trade with Saudi Arabia. There is no big issue there.”

Mr. Khashoggi said pressure on Saudi Arabia to end its boycott of Israel “does not help the peace process.”