America promises new help to Saudis after bombing

The United States closed ranks yesterday with its Gulf ally Saudi Arabia as a Saudi prince warned that suicide attacks by Saudis were a "wake-up call" to confront home-grown "extremism and fundamentalism".

George Bush assured the de facto ruler, Crown Prince Abdullah, in a telephone call that Washington "stands with Saudi Arabia in the war against terrorism". Richard Armitage, the US Deputy Secretary of State, who is in Riyadh on a scheduled stop-over, also pledged that the US "will be fully participating partners" in the oil-rich kingdom's anti-terror fight.

Mr Armitage, echoing initial Saudi assessments, said he was "personally quite sure" al-Qa'ida was behind the car bombing.

Such attacks appear to be directed "against the government of Saudi Arabia and the people of Saudi Arabia," he said, adding that he expected more to follow.

Yesterday President Bush was briefed on the Saudi crisis, as the administration promised the government in Riyadh new help to hunt down those responsible for the bombing of an Arab foreign workers' compound which killed at least 17.

But despite the arrest of hundreds of suspects after May's attacks on Western residential compounds in the Saudi capital, and repeated promises to leave no stone unturned, some officials in Washington are still doubtful how vigorously the Saudi government will act.

They point to the lukewarm Saudi co-operation in investigating past attacks against US military personnel which infuriated the FBI, and the sympathy for the group in parts of Saudi society, evidenced by the fact that 15 of the 19 hijackers on 11 September were Saudi nationals.

In an interview published yesterday but conducted before Saturday's Riyadh blast, Prince al-Waleed bin Talal, a billionaire businessman and influential nephew of King Fahd, said he did not feel Saudi society had adequately asked, let alone answered, the question of why some of its citizens kill themselves and others.

"We should have asked the questions before the attacks of 12 May and after the bloody attacks in New York," he said, before asking: "Do we need a third attack? Enough beating around the bush. We need to wake up now and ask: Why do we have extremism? Why fundamentalism?" the prince said in the reformist al-Watan daily.

By saying reform was the only way forward, and implicitly linking terrorist attacks to the influence of extremist clerics, the prince reignited a debate about the role of the powerful Islamic establishment known as the "Riyadh spring", which was quickly silenced by the Saudi government.

The interviewer was Jamal Khashoggi, who was sacked as editor-in-chief of al-Watan as a result of the newspaper's campaign against the excesses of the kingdom's notorious religious police.

"I speak first as a Saudi citizen, then as a businessman and finally as a member of the Saudi ruling family, because reform is not a requirement of businessmen only, or members of the ruling family, but a requirement of every Saudi citizen," the prince said.

Arab leaders have denounced the bombing. King Abdullah II of Jordan declared his "categorical and strong condemnation", rejecting "attempts to destabilise the kingdom". The secretary general of the Organisation of the Islamic Conference, Abdel Wahid Balqziz, yesterday called it a "horrendous terrorist act". In London, Prince Turki al-Faisal, the Saudi ambassador to Britain, declared that the latest attack was "a sign of desperation". At the very least however, it has destroyed the hope that the withdrawal of US military personnel would bring an end to terrorist activity in the kingdom. "The message is clear," one Washington analyst said. "This no longer is about the presence of infidel troops on the soil of the country which guards the holiest Islamic shrines. This is against the Saudi government."