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Posted on 09/23/2001 1:25:54 AM PDT by Syene

Headlines:

DEBKAfile Follows up World Exclusive on Royal Saudi Evacuation:
Saudi Arabia Backs out of Support for US Anti-Terror Offensive – After Possible Palace Revolution

US War Offensive Delayed by Loss of Saudi Base - and Fading Away of Arab Coalition Washington Hurriedly Hunts Bases of Operation for Lost Saudi Facilities in Turkey, Uzbekistan and Tadjikistan

Saudi Royal Family Secretly Sends Ailing King Fahd and Other Members of Royal House Out of Country in Anticipation of US Offensive in Region Leading to Military Crisis

In Last 72 Hours, a Saudi Royal Airlift of 12 Flights Carried King and Royal Party to Palace in Geneva

Two More Royal Flights Due in Geneva Saturday
Fahd Flew Aboard His Private Mobile Hospital Boeing 757 HZ-HMED

Article:

US Bereft of Arab Coalition After Saudi Arabia Backs out 22 September: The United States has delayed the start of its offensive against Afghanistan and Osama Bin Laden, in retaliation for the terrorist strikes in New York and Washington, because of a dramatic turnaround of Arab support in the Middle East, DEBKAfile ’s Gulf and Washington sources report.

Saturday afternoon, it became clear that events in Riyadh had dealt the final deathblow to the US Secretary of State, Colin Powell’s failed efforts to create an Arab front to bolster the Bush administration’s world war on terror.

The reason for King Fahd secret exit from Saudi Arabia, followed by a large royal party (see earlier DEBKAfile World Exclusive on this page), is believed by our most reliable sources to be a palace revolution sparked by differences in the royal family over support for the US offensive against Afghanistan, Osama Bin Laden’s terror network and other rogue targets. King Fahd and his Sudeiri faction, including defense minister Sultan, were in favor of letting the US place assault forces in forward bases on Saudi soil; the conservative, religious Crown Prince Abdullah, who runs the kingdom since King Fahd became ill, overruled him, backed by the religious establishment.

As a result, Saudi Arabia refused to let the US use the kingdom’s new combined air operations command center at Prince Sultan Air Base near Riyadh, after Air Force Lt. Gen Charles Wald had been dispatched to the base earlier this week, to take command of US air forces assigned to the Middle East and Southwest Asia.

His mission was to run the air war from the new, sophisticated air base opened this summer, a base linked to Al Dhafra in the United Arab Emirates and Seeb in the Sultanate of Oman. The Saudi base was also to have been the central command post not only for the 175 aircraft already based in the region for patrolling south Iraq’s no-flight zone, but also for directing attacks from other bases in the region in the new war offensive.

When General Wald landed in Saudi Arabia with his top aides on Tuesday, September 18, he was told he had no command base. That was when the feuding inside the royal house over its role in the American war against terrorism reached its climax. The monarch’s defeat in the argument inside the palace was apparently the main reason for his abrupt departure the next day, Wednesday, September 19.

The Pentagon has since then been casting about for replacement bases of operation and holding up the onset of the scheduled US campaign.

DEBKAfile ’s military sources believe that one of General Wald’s options for his command post is the Bahrain. Some of the fighter craft due to have been based in Saudi Arabia have been moved to Incerlik, the big air base in South Turkey, after Anakara made all its bases available for the American war effort, and the Uzbek military airport of Tuzel, 15 km. from Tashkent. Large-scale air and commando forces also landed Saturday in Tadjikistan, on the border of Afghanistan.

The American forces are now laboring to catch up with their schedule for the operation.

The upset in Riydah also sent the Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat racing to Riydah to meet Crown Prince Abdullah and update his own strategy with the turn of events in the royal house. DEBKAfile ’s Palestinian experts expect Arafat to turn tail and back out of the accommodations he broached under US and European pressure – including his commitment to a ceasefire.

According to DEBKAfile ’s Washington sources, the Bush administration realizes it has been let down by the Arab world, chiefly the Saudis and President Mubarak of Egypt, in its first steps to launch an international campaign to defeat world terrorism. It will go ahead, but not forget in a hurry. _______________________________

Article:

Saudis in Flight

22 September: King Fahd Bin Abdulaziz of Saudi Arabia has been secretly flown out of the kingdom to his palace in Geneva, Switzerland. DEBKAfile reports this breaking news exclusively from its Gulf and Middle East sources. The royal mobile hospital fitted aboard Boeing 757 HZ-HMED landed in the private VIP section of Geneva airport Wednesday afternoon, September 19. A palace conclave led by Crown Prince Abdullah, who effectively rules the kingdom, decided to remove the chronically ailing monarch to safety, fearing he might be stranded in the middle of a military crisis arising from the impending US offensive in the region.

The royal hospital plane was accompanied by another craft of the royal flight carrying the king’s family and entourage.

The possibility of a major terrorist attack on the royal palaces being sparked by the outbreak of hostilities was also taken into account in Riyadh. A group of princes was therefore carried to a safe place in the additional fleet of 10 royal aircraft that ferried members of the Saudi royal family to Geneva. More than a dozen Mercedes waited on the tarmac of Geneva International Airport to collect the royal arrivals.

According to DEBKAfile’s sources, the Saudi royal airlift, which began Tuesday night, September 18, is still in progress. Two more private royal planes are expected in the VIP section of Geneva airport Saturday.

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Article:

Lebanese news

Paraguay police detain 14 Lebanese and Syrians

Paraguayan police said Friday they had detained 14 Lebanese and Syrian citizens near the South American nation’s border with Argentina during probes into last week’s terror attacks in the United States.

The arrests were made in Encarnacion, a town near the border of Argentina, Paraguay and Brazil, where the United States said it was investigating if Islamic militant groups were receiving support for their activities.

________________________________________

DS 22/09/01

Former Carlos the Jackal associate says attacks on US were ‘easy’ Anis Naccache offers some alternative theories on the facts behind the Sept. 11 terror strikes

Nicholas Blanford
Daily Star staff

In the opinion of Anis Naccache, the catastrophic suicide attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon was “one of the easiest operations in the world.” And he should know. With his thinning ginger hair, graying beard and gold-rimmed spectacles, the mild-mannered 50-year-old looks like a university professor. But Anis Naccache has led anything but a mild life. He was a friend and associate of Ilich Ramirez Sanchez, better known as Carlos the Jackal. He joined Carlos in the kidnapping of the OPEC oil ministers in Vienna in 1975. “I saved (Sheikh Ahmad Zaki) Yamani’s life by sabotaging the explosives we placed in the room in case they used them,” he says of the former Saudi oil minister. He says he also persuaded Carlos not to shoot Yamani and one other minister, which was part of the original plan. Naccache, a member of Yasser Arafat’s Fatah faction, infiltrated the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and worked closely with Wadih Haddad, who achieved notoriety in the 1970s for hijacking airliners. Naccache was able to save several people marked by Haddad for assassination, including in 1974 US Ambassador George Godley and a French military attache. “They were going to blow up their cars with rocket-propelled grenades as they drove to work,” he says. He secretly informed Khalil Wazir, known as Abu Jihad, the PLO’s military commander who was assassinated himself by Israeli commandos in 1988. Godley and the French attache were warned in advance and saved.

“It wasn’t a good idea to kill an American ambassador in Beirut. It wouldn’t have been good behavior,” he says, the corners of his eyes crinkling with suppressed amusement. Opposed to the pro-Western regime in Iran, Naccache helped train Iranian exiles in the late 1970s in small makeshift camps in south Lebanon.

His downfall came in 1980 when he was instructed by Tehran to assassinate Shahpour Bakhtiar, a former Iranian prime minister who was accused of planning a coup. The operation went wrong, however. Bakhtiar, who was living in Paris, escaped unhurt while a French policeman and a woman bystander were shot dead.

Naccache was arrested and sentenced to life in prison only to be released 10 years later in exchange for French hostages held in Beirut. So, with his long experience in such matters, what is Naccache’s professional appraisal of the devastating attacks in New York and Washington last week? “It was easy,” he says in English with a heavy French accent, a legacy of his decade behind bars in France.

“Logistically, you usually need to find weapons and transport them, often through some form of security screen or barrier, and use them with maximum effect. I couldn’t see any logistics needed in this operation, only people ready to die. Some of them are trained pilots for sure. It was not simply a case of crashing planes anywhere, but precision targeting.” The coordination was simple also, he says. “The smooth running of American airports and airlines means that it’s easy to find out on the internet what planes go where and when. I consider this operation more easy than a car bomb because with a car bomb you need to put the explosives in the car, you need good electrics to wire up the explosives, and you need to take the vehicle to the target … for these people (in the US attacks), everything was there waiting for them.” As someone who was once labeled a “terrorist,” Naccache is unimpressed with President Bush’s pledge to wage war against international terror.

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