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Saudi-U.S. Relations Strained After Dhahran Bombing Indictments
DUBAI, June 23 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Saudi irritation at the U.S. indictments for a deadly 1996 bombing in the Gulf Arab state has served to highlight the growing unease between allies Riyadh and Washington at a time of tension in the Middle East.
Washington "has not kept us informed nor coordinated with us, and I don't know for what reason," Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdel Aziz protested in an interview published on Saturday.
U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft announced Thursday that a grand jury had indicted 13 Saudis and a Lebanese, alleged members of a Saudi branch of the Shiite militant group Hezbollah, for the blast in the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran.
Prince Nayef said most of the suspects were being held in Saudi Arabia which would soon put them on trial, ruling out any extradition to the United States.
"Only three suspects, two of them Saudis and the other a Lebanese, have not been arrested. The other accused are being held in Saudi Arabia," he told Al-Riyadh newspaper, without giving a number for those under arrest.
Saudi Arabia insisted that it, and not the United States, will investigate and put on trial suspects in the 1996 Khobar bombing that killed 19 American servicemen.
"The U.S. justice minister's announcement does not concern us and will have no effect on the course of the investigation," said the prince, who denied the existence of a Saudi Hezbollah and dismissed U.S. charges of Iranian involvement.
On Friday, Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdel Aziz said Washington had no right to issue indictments for the June 25, 1996 bombing of the Khobar Towers military housing complex that killed 19 U.S. servicemen.
The "American government has the right to discuss the Khobar explosion, but it does not have the right to take any (legal) step whatsoever in this matter," Prince Sultan said.
The wrangle over the Dhahran bombing comes a month after Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdel Aziz, who in effect runs Saudi Arabia due to the ailing health of King Fahd, decided against paying a visit to the White House.
The crown prince's snub was in protest at U.S. support for Israel in its ongoing conflict with the Palestinians.
Saudi Arabia was "unhappy with the absence of a serious American role to halt Israel's savage aggressions against the Palestinians", an official source in Riyadh told the French news wire AFP.
Washington's leading ally in the Arab world "knows the United States can restrain Israel," he said.
The growing strain in relations also coincides with reports of growing threats against U.S. targets, notably in the Gulf region where around 20,000 U.S. forces are based, mostly on warships.
On Friday, the United States said its naval fleet in the Gulf has been ordered to put to sea in response to a credible threat of attack against U.S. interests worldwide.
And the State Department issued a "worldwide caution," warning U.S. citizens of possible terrorist attacks following the indictments in Alexandria, Virginia.
To review their "security postures", the department temporarily shuttered the U.S. embassies in Bahrain and Senegal.
On June 9, the U.S. embassy in Yemen was closed to the public and the FBI withdrew from Sana'a its team investigating last October's bombing of the USS Cole in the southern port city of Aden.
The Federal Bureau of Investigation cited a "very real and credible threat" to its team probing the blast that killed 17 sailors on the U.S. destroyer.
In Turkey, U.S. forces at a southern Turkish base have been put on a higher state of alert after reports of threats, a spokesman for the air base said Friday.
Meanwhile, Iran's foreign ministry has rejected as baseless U.S. accusations that the Iranian government was directly involved in the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing.
"U.S. judiciary has leveled charges against Iran which have no legal and judicial basis," Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Assefi said.
His comments came a day after 13 Saudis and a Lebanese were indicted in Washington in the June 25, 1996 attack on a U.S. military housing complex in the city of Khobar.
Following the indictment, U.S. Attorney General John Ashcroft has said that "elements of the Iranian government inspired, supported and supervised" members of Saudi Hezbollah, the Shiite group blamed for the blast in the eastern Saudi city of Dhahran, although no individual members of Iran's leadership were named in the indictments.
However, other U.S. officials have said that there was no proof as yet that Iranian authority's sponsored the bombing, the Middle East Daily online service reported.
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