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Saudi Arabia to Allow U.S. Use of Military Facilities
DUBAI, Sept 28 (News Agencies) - Saudi Arabia has come down on the side of its U.S. ally in the war on terror, allowing Washington to use air command facilities in the kingdom in its anticipated retaliation for the September 11th attacks.
A Gulf diplomat said Friday Riyadh had given Washington the green light to use a state-of-the-art command center to direct any military action against Saudi-born dissident Osama bin Laden, prime suspect in the anti-U.S. attacks, and his Taliban hosts in Afghanistan.
Neighboring Qatar has also decided to let U.S. cargo planes land to load with supplies pre-positioned in the emirate, the diplomat told AFP.
"Saudi Arabia has no objection to the use of the facilities at Prince Sultan Air Base," said the diplomat, who requested anonymity.
He denied reports that Riyadh had resisted a request to use the command center at the U.S.-built base, 100 kilometers (60 miles) south of the capital.
"The Saudis had simply not decided," he explained, adding that U.S. aircraft were already picking up supplies from Qatar.
The diplomat said Washington was mainly interested in operating the command center, but the exact use of facilities at the air base, which hosts some 5,000 U.S. troops and dozens of U.S. and allied aircrafts, remained to be worked out in talks between U.S. and Saudi military officials.
The clearest signal yet by a Saudi official that the conservative kingdom would allow Washington to use the air base came Wednesday from Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal, who denied a report that Riyadh had expressed reservations about use of the facility.
"Saudi Arabia will not avoid its duty," Prince Saud said when asked by reporters if Riyadh's support for the U.S.-led anti-terror coalition would include help for U.S. military action against the Taliban.
"The fight should be not just to track down the criminals of the September 11th attacks, but to exterminate the infrastructure that helps the terrorists," he said.
The attack on the U.S. "goes beyond anything in the past and present and calls for new perceptions of cooperation," Saudi Arabia's chief diplomat added.
Saudi Arabia, which until the attacks was one of only three countries recognizing the Taliban regime in Kabul, has severed links with the militia, accusing it of "harboring terrorists."
The Saudi government has faced a dilemma over how to take part alongside close ally Washington in the fight against terrorism directed at bin Laden, who was stripped of his Saudi nationality in 1994, and at Muslim Afghanistan.
The kingdom's rulers are caught between the demands of an ally "vital for the survival of the regime" and the imperatives of a very conservative public, a Gulf diplomat explained Thursday.
The United States is not only Saudi Arabia's main arms supplier and leading economic partner, including as a buyer of the crude oil which accounts for 80% of government revenues, it also protected the country from Iraq when Baghdad invaded neighboring Kuwait in 1990.
Thousands of U.S. soldiers and dozens of warplanes are based in the kingdom, fueling a latent anger among some elements which can boil over into violence, as demonstrated in two attacks on U.S. military targets in the kingdom in 1995 and 1996.
Bin Laden has made the removal of U.S. troops from the birthplace of Islam the leitmotif of his campaign against the royal family.
The Washington Post quoted unnamed senior U.S. officials on Friday saying Saudi Arabia had signaled that it would permit U.S. troops and aircraft stationed on its soil to take part in action against bin Laden and Afghanistan, where the Taliban militia protects him.
The paper said that after receiving assurances, the Pentagon dropped plans to set up an alternate command center elsewhere in the Gulf region.
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