SA to US: Get Out!

["Ian Murray" <seamus2001@xxxxxxxxx>]

Saudis tell US forces to get out

Foreign soldiers seen as political liability

Ewen MacAskill, diplomatic editor
Saturday January 19, 2002
The Guardian

Saudi Arabia's rulers are poised to throw US strategy in the Middle East into disarray by asking
Washington to pull its forces out of the kingdom because they have become a "political liability".

Senior Saudi officials have privately complained that the US has "outstayed its welcome" and that
the kingdom may soon request that the American presence - a product of the Gulf war - is brought to
an end.

Both the White House and the US state department insisted yesterday that the military arrangement
between the two countries was still working. The White House spokesman, Ari Fleischer, said that the
president, George Bush, "believes that our presence in the region has a very helpful and stabilising
effect in a dangerous region".

Relations between the US and Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally, have been severely
strained since September 11. Both sides have been desperately denying for months that there is a
rift.

The US is reluctant to withdraw its 4,500 troops from the Prince Sultan air base, south of Saudi's
capital Riyadh, because it could be perceived as a propaganda victory for Osama bin Laden, who
frequently protested at the presence of non-believers so close to the main Muslim holy sites.

But the increasingly brittle and vulnerable ruling House of Saud is nervous about an internal revolt
by Bin Laden's al-Qaida terror network and other extremist militants, and has been publicly
loosening its links with Washington.

The huge Prince Sultan air base played a crucial logistical role in the bombing of Afghanistan.
Withdrawal would upset the military balance in the Middle East by providing a boost to the Iraqi
president, Saddam Hussein. US planes based in Saudi regularly bomb along the Iraqi border as part of
its policy of containment of Saddam.

Britain, which jointly patrols the Iraqi no-fly zone with the US, has planes based both in Saudi and
Kuwait. A pull-out by Washington would switch the focus to the British air base in Kuwait, whose
leaders try to avoid drawing attention to the British presence.

Two senior US state department officials have been in Saudi this week: William Burns, the assistant
secretary for the near east, and Lincoln Bloomfield, the assistant secretary for political and
military affairs.

The US state department insisted yesterday that at no point during Mr Bloomfield's visit, either
formally or informally, had the Saudis said they wanted the US to leave.

But the US ambassador to Saudi, Robert Jordan, was quoted as saying when Mr Bloomfield arrived in
the kingdom: "He is here for consultations with the Saudi government to review our presence here and
to discuss what we need and what we don't need."

The US secretary of state, Colin Powell, who is in Nepal, denied the Saudis wanted a withdrawal:
"There has been no discussion of such an issue."

Many in the US have been upset with Saudi because not only is it Bin Laden's native country but 15
of the 19 terrorists involved in the September 11 attacks were from the kingdom. The Saudi media
have reported that about 200 Saudis have been captured in Afghanistan fighting with al-Qaida and the
Taliban.

The kingdom is volatile, with a stagnant economy, high unemployment, no democratic outlets and King
Fahd unable to crack down on militant clerics.

Hostility to the US is widespread but that is mirrored in the US where there is a huge well of
resentment that, having fought to push back Iraq in 1991 and having protected Saudi since, Riyadh
refused to provide military help during the Afghan campaign.

Reflecting this, Carl Levin, who heads the US Senate armed services committee, said: "We need a base
in that region, but it seems to me we should find a place that is more hospitable."

Bin Laden listed as the main justifications for the attacks on New York and Washington the presence
of the US soldiers in the kingdom, US support for Israel in the conflict with the Palestinians, and
the US campaign against Iraq. He said six years ago: "There is no more important duty than pushing
the American enemy out of the holy land [of Arabia]."

The US could continue its containment of Iraq from aircraft carriers based in the Gulf. But the US
air force secretary, James Roche, said a pull-out would make life awkward: "It would be difficult,
unless we could replicate the air operations centre somewhere else."