Saudi diplomats insist claims of the kingdom's culpability in the 9/11 terror attacks are both "malicious and blatantly false". Khaled Dawoud, in Washington and John R Bradley, in Jeddah, report After an ad hoc meeting with US President George W Bush on Tuesday Saudi Foreign Minister Saud Al-Faisal confirmed that his country has asked for the declassification of 28 pages from a 900-page report prepared by a joint congressional committee on the errors that led to the 11 September attacks. The classified part of the report that was released on 24 July treats the roles of foreign governments in the attacks, and several congressmen made off-the-record comments that it dealt mainly with Saudi Arabia. Sources who read the classified part said it did not accuse the Saudi government of direct involvement in the attacks, but claimed that certain Saudi individuals, including officials, might have provided help to some of the hijackers, or provided funding to charitable organisations with links to the Al-Qa'eda organisation that claimed responsibility for the attacks on New York and Washington in which more than 3,000 people were killed. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers who crashed the planes into the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon were Saudis. Despite the Saudi appeal to declassify the controversial part of the report, Bush said in an earlier joint news conference with Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon that he decided not to do so because of the report's sensitive content on sources and means of gathering information, content that, if released, might jeopardise ongoing investigations regarding the 11 September attacks. However, he did not rule out declassifying parts of the report in the future. Al- Faisal said his country requested the release of the classified part in order to be able to respond to any allegations "in a clear and credible manner and remove any doubts about the kingdom's true role in the war against terrorism and its commitment to fight it". The Saudi foreign minister, speaking to reporters after his meeting with Bush, said his country was "disappointed" that the classified part of the report was not going to be published, "but we understand the reasons for his [Bush's] decision not to publish it." Al-Faisal added that his country was being "indicted by insinuation" since that part of the report remained secret. "It is an outrage to any sense of fairness that 28 blank pages are now considered substantial evidence to proclaim the guilt of a country that has been a true friend and partner to the United States for over 60 years," he said. The indictment by insinuation to which Al- Faisal referred is related to events of a week in which American lawmakers took to the talk shows and leaked information to the New York Times in a bid to persuade the White House that it should make public the alleged complicity of the oil-rich kingdom with terrorist networks, rather than diplomatically trying to avoid offence to the Saudi royal family. Regarding a major set of allegations in the report, Al-Faisal said that his country has been "wrongfully and morbidly accused of complicity in the tragic terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001". He added that "this accusation is based on misguided speculation and is born of fully disguised malicious intent. It has been refuted by the consistent public statements of the president and responsible administration officials, especially those who have access to the facts and who have praised Saudi Arabia as an active and strong ally in the war on terrorism." Al-Faisal said authorities in his country has questioned thousands of individuals and arrested more than 500 suspects since 11 September. He also stated that the Saudi actions "have not only led to the arrests of major terrorists and the dismantling of their cells in Saudi Arabia, but also led to similar results in the United States". The alleged assumptions of the congressional report, as well as insinuations drawn from its classified pages, clearly disenchanted not only Al-Faisal but also Saudi Ambassador to the US Prince Bandar Bin Sultan. "Rumors, innuendoes and untruths have become, when it comes to the kingdom, the order of the day," Bin Sultan stated as part of a vociferous denouncement. He angrily denied that his country had failed to cooperate with the FBI and CIA in fighting terrorism and dismissed accusations that it helped finance two of the hijackers as "outrageous". The congressional report suggests that senior Saudi officials funnelled hundreds of millions of dollars to charitable groups and other organisations that "may have helped" finance the 11 September attacks. Similar accusations grew louder late last year with the disclosure that money donated by Bin Sultan's wife may have wound up with Saudi students suspected of aiding two of the hijackers. The Saudis claim that Princess Haifa Al-Faisal contributed the money to pay the medical bills of a Saudi woman living in the United States and that she was unaware that the woman's husband turned over some of the money to others. The White House has accepted the explanation. Al-Faisal said also that the report "never mentioned the many steps that have been taken, such as strict auditing procedures and financial control mechanisms to ensure that our tradition of charitable giving cannot be abused". Some US officials also questioned whether the committee had made a conclusive case linking Saudi funding to the hijackings. Other unnamed officials quoted by the New York Times affirmed that while the classified pages retraced the Saudis' support for Islamic charitable groups they lacked solid evidence that the Saudis knew that the recipients used the money to finance terror. On another matter, the congressional report speculates that Omar Al-Bayoumi, an associate of two of the hijackers, could have been a Saudi government agent. "Reports that Omar Al-Bayoumi is an agent of the Saudi government are baseless and not true," the Saudi envoy responded. "It is unfortunate that reports keep circulating in the media describing him as an agent of the Saudi government with attribution only to anonymous officials." The report details Al-Bayoumi's ties with 11 September suicide attackers Khalid Al-Mihdar and Nawaf Al-Hazmi. In January 2000, Al- Bayoumi entered the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles. Upon leaving, he headed directly to a restaurant where he met with the two future attackers, a meeting one FBI agent said "may not have been accidental". The two men had just arrived from Malaysia, where they had participated in a meeting with Al- Qa'eda officials under surveillance by Malaysian officials that was requested by the CIA. Al- Bayoumi then helped the men rent an apartment in San Diego, paying the first month's rent and the security deposit. The congressional report said that since 11 September the FBI "has learned that Al-Bayoumi has connections to terrorist elements", adding, "Despite the fact that he was a student, Al-Bayoumi had access to seemingly unlimited funding from Saudi Arabia. For example, an FBI source identified Al-Bayoumi as the person who delivered $400,000 from Saudi Arabia for the Kurdish mosque in San Diego. One of the FBI's best sources in San Diego informed the FBI that he thought that Al-Bayoumi must be an intelligence officer for Saudi Arabia or another foreign power." Another issue raised by the report concerns the lack of Saudi cooperation in fighting terrorism. "According to a US government official, it was clear from about 1996 that the Saudi government would not cooperate with the United States on matters related to Osama Bin Laden," the report states. In contrast to this statement, former FBI Director Louis Freeh has testified that the FBI forged an "effective working relationship" with the Saudis after the 1996 Khobar Towers bombing in the Eastern Province, which killed 19 US marines and injured hundreds of others. And the Bush administration has recently praised Saudi efforts to wrap up Al-Qa'eda operatives following the May bombings of housing compounds in Riyadh. Bin Laden, head of the Al-Qa'eda terrorist network, was born in Saudi Arabia to a prominent and rich family, but turned against the Saudi government after it allowed the United States to station troops and supplies here in 1990. In punishment for his dissidence, the Saudi government revoked his citizenship. Bin Laden issued a fatwa in 1995 saying that the kingdom's oil fields should not be attacked because the industry would be needed after an Islamic revolution. However, he has since reversed that fatwa and now calls openly for attacks against all government and US targets in Saudi Arabia.
