Posted on 06/18/2004 5:39:27 PM PDT by Indy Pendance
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States extended a warning of possible al Qaeda attacks against Westerners and oil workers beyond Saudi Arabia to the entire Gulf region on Friday after a kidnapped American was beheaded in the kingdom.
A senior Saudi official criticized the United States for issuing such warnings, saying they could help the militants to spread fear in the oil-rich region that depends heavily on foreign workers.
President Bush, who is campaigning for reelection as a strong leader in the war on terrorism, has vowed not to yield ground to militants but his administration on Thursday strongly urged U.S. citizens to leave Saudi Arabia.
"The U.S. government has received information that extremists may be planning to carry out attacks against Westerners and oil workers in the Persian Gulf region, beyond Saudi Arabia," the State Department said in its Friday announcement.
The regional warning reflected the same range of potential dangers, such as kidnappings and suicide bombings, as it had specifically for Saudi Arabia but it did not advise Americans to leave the area as a whole.
Adel al-Jubeir, a foreign policy adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah Saudi Arabia, said he did not support such warnings.
"We believe that one of the objectives of the terrorists is to drive people out of Saudi Arabia and so as a consequence we believe that calls for withdrawing people from Saudi Arabia could inadvertently play into the hands of the terrorists," he told reporters in Washington.
A State Department official, who asked not to be named, said it would be irresponsible not to warn U.S. citizens about the dangers in the region.
"Of course the Saudis don't agree with us telling people to leave. But you can't tell them (Americans) to hunker down and ride it out because the fact is they cannot be protected," he said. "That does not mean the United States of America, the U.S. government, is not committed to working with Saudi Arabia."
The United States has withdrawn all but essential staff from its embassy in Riyadh because of the lack of security.
On Friday, al Qaeda militants beheaded U.S. hostage Paul Johnson and their leader was then killed in a shootout with security forces as he tried to dispose of the body, Saudi officials said.
Saudi Arabia has been battling an intensifying al Qaeda campaign to destabilize the government that has particularly targeted foreigners in the world's largest oil exporter over the last few months.
Jubeir said the militants had failed to spark an exodus of foreigners and that even if they did Saudis could run their own oil industry.
"We believe we can manage our oil facilities and oil production with all-Saudi personnel," he said.
Al-Qaeda is the extremist militancy of peace, its not terrorism. Reuters knows this and is always right, because [J]ournalism is a profession.
A senior Saudi official criticized the United States for issuing such warnings, saying they could help the militants to spread fear in the oil-rich region that depends heavily on foreign workers.
Right, d-ckless, just ignore the problem and it will go away.
We need to keep killing all of the terrorists.
Didn't I read that Arabs had controlling interest in Reuters? If so, why does Reuters still have any credibility in the west.
We might as well get our news straight from Al Jazeera.
Yea, chopping off people's heads is nothing to worry about. That darn US just trying to scare people.
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