DUBAI: A coalition of Saudi activists is urging the West’s top women diplomats to publicly support a campaign by women in Saudi Arabia to win the right to drive.
The group, Saudi Women for Driving, says it sent letters Monday to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton appealing for statements that back the effort to end the male-only driving rules in the Western-allied kingdom.
The Saudi activists say the Saudi campaign is inspired by the Arab uprisings and deserves high-level Western backing.

About 40 Saudi women got behind the wheel Friday, saying they were beginning a campaign to lift the restrictions in the ultraconservative Muslim country. No arrests were reported.
Saudi Arabia is the only country that bans women from driving. The prohibition forces families to hire drivers, and those who cannot afford the $300 to $400 a month for a driver must rely on male relatives to drive them to work, school, shopping or the doctor.

A similar effort to protest the ban more than two decades ago faltered. In November 1990, when U.S. troops were deployed to Saudi Arabia before the invasion to oust Iraqi troops from Kuwait, about 50 women got behind the wheel and drove family cars. They were jailed for one day, had their passports confiscated and lost their jobs.
The official start of the latest campaign follows the 10-day detention last month of a 32-year-old woman, Manal al-Sherif, after she posted a video of herself driving. She was released after reportedly signing a pledge that she would not drive again.