[Nasional-e] [Nasional] AP: Saudis Bristle at Terror Complaints
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Mon Nov 25 21:12:02 2002
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Saudis Bristle at Terror Complaints
Mon Nov 25, 6:03 AM ET Add White House - AP Cabinet &
State to My Yahoo!
By CALVIN WOODWARD, Associated Press Writer
WASHINGTON (AP) - Saudi officials, facing harsh
accusations that they are soft on terrorism, say they
are checking records to see how money from the wife of
their U.S. ambassador might have eventually gone to
supporters of the Sept. 11 attacks.
In trying to calm the latest strain in their alliance
with the United States, they called "crazy" any
suggestion she intended to support the hijackers.
Embassy officials spent the weekend having bankers
pore over the records of Princess Haifa al-Faisal,
wife of Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to figure
out how thousands of dollars in monthly payments from
her account apparently ended up in the wrong hands,
said Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir.
Some of the money apparently went into the accounts of
two men who U.S. officials think provided financial
support to hijackers.
A parade of senators, including some who doubted the
princess meant to help terrorists, upbraided the Saudi
government on Sunday's television talk shows for what
they saw as years of complicity in anti-American
radicalism.
Saudis have a history of "buying off extremism," even
if only by averting their gaze from it, said Sen.
Joseph Biden (news, bio, voting record), D-Del.,
outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee.
It's "part of a saga where the Saudis don't know, have
not checked, are not nearly conscientious enough in
determining whether or not a 'charity' is genuinely a
charity or a front for, or a back door for, terrorists
or terrorist-sympathizing organizations or
individuals," Biden said on CNN's "Late Edition."
President Bush (news - web sites)'s aides, for whom
the matter is a troubling turn as they work to shore
up Saudi support for a possible war with Iraq, did not
join in the recriminations.
There might be a legitimate explanation for the
payments, a senior White House official said.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity,
credited the Saudis with helping in the anti-terror
war, in quiet ways that bring them no credit in the
West but also do not attract the attention of
fundamentalist elements at home.
Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer (news, bio, voting
record) of New York saw that balancing act
differently.
Saudis "have played a duplicitous game, and that is
they say to the terrorists, 'We'll do everything you
want, just leave us alone,'" he said on ABC's "This
Week." "That game has got to stop."
Still, the lawmakers did not know whether the princess
had meant for the money to go to Omar al-Bayoumi and
Osama Basnan. U.S. officials believe those men
provided financial support to two of the Sept. 11,
2001, hijackers while the terrorists lived in the
United States.
Saudi adviser al-Jubeir said the princess sent monthly
checks to a Saudi woman living in this country who
sought help paying for medical treatment. It came out
only now that the woman was Basnan's wife and that
some of the money ended up with al-Bayoumi's family as
well, he said.
Basnan is believed to be back in Saudi Arabia after
his deportation and al-Bayoumi is either there or in
Britain, al-Jubeir said. Saudi officials will probably
question them, he said, but he noted pointedly that
U.S. and British officials already interrogated them
months ago.
Al-Jubeir said Saudis had bank officials in
Washington, starting at 3 a.m. Saturday, begin going
through the princess' electronic transactions, which
include hundreds or thousands of payments to
expatriate Saudi charities and citizens.
"That's when we discovered that some of the checks
were endorsed to third parties," he said.
"To think that Princess Haifa, whose father was
murdered by a terrorist in 1995, who's a mother, who's
a grandmother, would write checks to people who give
it to terrorists is crazy," he added.
Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and John McCain,
R-Ariz., who together set up an independent commission
that will investigate the terror attacks, joined Biden
in criticizing Saudi conduct.
Saudi leaders "have to decide which side they're on,"
Lieberman said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"For too many generations they have pacified and
accommodated themselves to the most extreme,
fanatical, violent elements of Islam, and those
elements have now turned on us and the rest of the
world."
Added McCain: "The Saudi royal family has been engaged
in a Faustian bargain for years to keep themselves in
power."
Al-Jubeir said the princess sent the woman $2,000 a
month; other accounts have put the figure higher. The
FBI (news - web sites) is investigating the bank
transactions.
U.S. officials suspect al-Bayoumi and Basnan helped
Khalif al-Mihdhar and Nawaf al-Hazmi after they came
to the United States from a planning conference in
Malaysia of the al-Qaida terror network.
Al-Mihdhar and al-Hazmi were aboard the plane that
crashed into the Pentagon (news - web sites) on Sept.
11, killing 189 people.
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