Saudis pledge to combat terror

The US is sending an FBI team to Riyadh

Saudi Arabia has pledged to do "whatever it takes" to uphold security in the wake of the suicide bombings in Riyadh and terror alerts around the world.

Crown Prince Abdullah's policy adviser said the kingdom had "an infinite commitment" to security, in a stern warning to terrorists and a defence of Saudi security policy to date.

In the past there have been questions over the extent of Saudi Arabia's co-operation with other powers in dealing with terrorists.

But adviser Adel al-Jubeir said: "We have never had as close, or as strong, a cooperative effort between our two countries [Saudi Arabia and the United States] as we have now.

"Have we failed? Yes. On Monday, we failed. We will learn from this mistake, we will ensure it never happens again."

On Monday, we failed. We will learn from this mistake, we will ensure it never happens again

Adel al-Jubeir
Saudi policy advisor

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The comments come amid a series of alerts against possible terror attacks around the world, relating to a number of countries in Asia, Africa and the Gulf.

The warnings reflect concern that Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network is planning more attacks on Western targets, following Monday's bombings in Riyadh in which at least 25 people and nine attackers died.

The US has now warned of a possible imminent attack in the western Saudi city of Jeddah.

Click here to see a map of recent travel warnings

The US State Department has also advised Americans to defer non-essential travel to Kenya and to carefully review plans to visit East Africa in general, while Britain abruptly suspended all commercial flights to Kenya.

The British move followed intelligence warnings on al-Qaeda activity.

On Friday the UK Foreign Office also warned of a "clear terrorist threat" in six other East African countries: Djibouti, Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Tanzania and Uganda.

Australia and New Zealand have meanwhile issued a warning to their citizens to be on alert in South-East Asia - a region still struggling to rebuild tourism following October's nightclub bombings on the Indonesian holiday island of Bali.

And in Lebanon, officials said the intelligence service - with help from Syrian forces - had arrested members of a group that was planning to attack the US embassy in Beirut.

'Bad track record'

Assuming the Saudis give permission, the FBI is likely to send in a team of about two dozen people to investigate the bomb attacks, which targeted compounds housing Westerners.

While US officials are publicly talking of Saudi co-operation, some security experts have raised concerns.

The Saudis describe Monday's bombings as a security "failure"

FBI Director Robert Mueller said the initial Saudi probe of the blasts had been "thorough and expeditious", adding that the FBI's role would be to assist and not take over the investigation.

But Weldon Kennedy, who retired as FBI deputy director in 1997, said the Saudis refused to let FBI agents interview suspects arrested in the 1996 Khobar truck bombing that killed 19 US soldiers.

Those suspects were summarily beheaded, ending a US chance at gaining valuable intelligence or even proving they were actually guilty.

"They don't have a particularly good track record to really co-operating," Kennedy said.

"They don't really follow through. They give lip service to co-operation."

One of the problems, experts say, is that while Saudi Arabia remains such a closed society it is extremely hard to know exactly what goes on there.

But the Saudis are adamant that both they and the US "are in the crosshairs" of al-Qaeda, and that all efforts will be made to uphold security in the country.

The US administration has insisted that its war on terror has shattered al-Qaeda's leadership, but Homeland Security Chief Tom Ridge said: "The potential is still very, very real."

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