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Powell Denies Report Claiming Saudis May Ask U.S. Military to Leave
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| U.S. military presence to continue despite claimed report that Saudis believe the U.S. has 'overstayed its welcome' |
WASHINGTON, Jan. 18 (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell, denied Friday a report that Saudi Arabia may soon ask for U.S. forces to leave, news agencies reported, but he added that the United States was always reviewing its military presence in the Gulf.
The Washington Post said Friday that Saudi Arabia is increasingly uncomfortable with U.S. military presence on its territory and may ask that they leave and devise a less conspicuous form of military cooperation.
Powell, speaking from Kathmandu at a news conference during a visit to India, said he had heard nothing from Saudi officials in conversations over the past week to support the report, Agence France-Presse (AFP) reported.
"I have talked to Saudi officials at very senior levels to include my counterpart, Foreign Minister, Saud [al-Faisal], almost every other day this past week and there has been no discussion of such an issue," Powell said.
"At the same time, we are constantly reviewing our footprint in that part of the world to see if we have the right distribution or presence over the various countries that are there," he added. "We want to be good guests in all of the countries that host our military forces."
He said that U.S. Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and the Pentagon were constantly reviewing the situation.
"But there is nothing to that story that I think warrants my attention at the moment or [that of] Secretary Rumsfeld."
In the Post article, Sen. Carl M. Levin (D-Mich.), chairman of the Armed Services Committee, was quoted as suggesting it might be better to move to more "hospitable" territory.
"We need a base in that region, but it seems to me we should find a place that is more hospitable," he said in the article. "I don't think they want us to stay there."
One reason for ending the U.S. military's 11-year presence, an unnamed senior Saudi official told the daily, was that top Saudi rules believe the United States has "overstayed its welcome."
The Saudis want to appear self-reliant and not dependent on U.S. military support, Saudi officials told the daily.
U.S. presence has become a political liability in domestic policy and in the Arab world and Riyadh has become uncomfortable with its role in U.S. efforts to contain Iraqi President, Saddam Hussein, they added.
On this point, a U.S. Defense Department official who worked closely with the Saudis said they want to hold the United States to the promise it made in 1990, before the 1991 Gulf War, that it would withdraw when the job was done.
The Saudis, the U.S. official said, interpreted the end of the U.S. military commitment to mean when Iraq was expelled from Kuwait, but U.S. officials believe the job remains undone because Hussein is still in power in Baghdad.
The senior Saudi official made it clear the U.S. military should continue in Saudi Arabia until the war in Afghanistan was over. Then, he added, other forms of less conspicuous military cooperation should be devised.
The paper described the growing anti-American sentiment among the Saudi citizens, who have never been entirely comfortable with the U.S. military presence on their soil.
"We make it very difficult for our Arab friends by being there because they have to defend our presence," Gen. Charles Horner, the U.S. Air Force commander during the Gulf War, told the Post.
U.S. officials said a military withdrawal from Saudi Arabia would complicate U.S.-Saudi relations since it would appear to reward Osama bin Laden, who has called for all U.S. troops to leave Saudi Arabia, his country of birth.
Bin Laden believes that the presence of non-Muslims in the Arabian Peninsula is an offense to Islam, as Saudi Arabia - the country in the region of Islam’s birthplace - houses the two holiest sites for Muslims, the Ka'aba in Mecca and Prophet Muhammad (SAW)'s mosque in Medina.
Administration officials also said that such a withdrawal would damage the U.S.'s ability to "protect" Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and to carry out any operations in Iraq.
Saudi officials stressed that nothing would be done precipitously and that Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz was sensitive to the need to avoid creating the impression that he was responding to pressure from bin Laden.
Asked if the Saudis had told the United States of its intentions, assistant Secretary of Defense for public affairs, Victoria Clarke, declined to answer, the daily said.
"We will continue to work with [the Saudis] in as cooperative a fashion as possible as we go forward," she said in the article.
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