Riyadh: The Saudi cabinet on Monday urged the US Congress to reconsider a law allowing families of 9/11 victims to sue the kingdom, warning of “grave consequences.”

The cabinet said that the adoption of the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) is of great concern to the international community, said Saudi acting Minister of Culture and Information Essam bin Saad bin Saeed. The cabinet also said that the Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA) represented a violation of a leading principle preventing lawsuits against governments that regulated international relations for hundreds of years.

The international relations are governed by the principle of equality and sovereign immunity, which has been in place for hundreds of years and the weakening of the sovereign immunity affects negatively all countries, including the United States, he added.

The US senate and house of representatives voted overwhelmingly last Wednesday to approve legislation that will allow the families of those killed in the 2001 attacks on the United States to seek damages from the Saudi government. Fifteen out of the 19 hijackers were Saudi nationals. Riyadh has always dismissed suspicions that it backed the attackers, who killed nearly 3,000 people under the banner of militant group Al Qaeda.

Riyadh is one of Washington’s longest-standing and most important allies in the Middle East and part of a US-led coalition fighting ISIL militants in Iraq and Syria.

The Saudi government lobbied strongly against the bill in the run-up to the vote, and warned it would undermine the principle of sovereign immunity. But Saudi officials stopped short of threatening any specific retaliation if the law was passed.