Barbara Ferguson • Arab News Correspondent

WASHINGTON, 26 July 2003 — The joint report released by the United States Congress on Thursday slamming the FBI and CIA for failing to prevent the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks and criticizing Saudi Arabia’s alleged lack of cooperation in tracking down Osama Bin Laden has once again put Saudi-US relations in the middle of a media frenzy.

The Congressional report states the Sept. 11 hijackers received foreign government support, a veiled reference to Saudi Arabia, while they were in the US plotting the attacks on New York and Washington. The report also focuses on Omar Al-Bayoumi, who some in the FBI believed to be a Saudi intelligence agent.

The Saudi government has angrily denied these allegations.

The main focus of the current uproar is that the report found information in intelligence files “suggesting specific sources of foreign support for some of the Sept. 11 hijackers while they were in the US.” But all of the next 28 pages after that sentence were deleted.

The deletion of those pages has resulted in an anti-Saudi backlash in Washington. New York Democratic Sen. Chuck Schumer said yesterday that what had been deleted was surely sensitive information about Saudi Arabia, the homeland of 15 of the 19 Sept. 11 hijackers. The Saudi Embassy responded furiously to the allegations, issuing a statement late Thursday condemning what it calls “false accusations made for political purposes.” In response to yesterday’s Congressional report, Arab News has learned the Senate Government Affairs Committee will hold a hearing next Friday on Saudi Arabia’s alleged involvement in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

Two of the panelists slated to appear, Steven Emerson and Dore Gold, are well-known pro-Zionist critics of the Kingdom. A high-ranking staffer on the committee told Arab News that a member of the Saudi Embassy initially agreed to appear, then pulled out of the panel.

“That is absolute nonsense,” Nabil Al-Jubeir, director of the Information Office at the Saudi Arabian Embassy in Washington, told Arab News.

“We told them right from the start that our diplomats do not testify before foreign legislative bodies. No government would allow its diplomats to testify under these circumstances. But they went ahead and sent the invitation anyway, knowing it would not happen.”

Al-Jubeir said the Saudi Embassy has, since Sept. 11, made an effort to brief members of Congress and their staffers on questions they have about the “Saudi connection.”

“We have done this with various committees and individual members for the last few years.” And, he added, “if they express any further concerns, we invite them to Saudi Arabia to meet with officials there.”

Regarding the choice of panelists, Al-Jubeir said: “It is unfortunate the International House Committee has asked them to testify, when we all know their agendas. Mr. Gold, a former Israeli ambassador, is campaigning to malign our people and our religion. As for Steve Emerson, everyone knows his position on Islam.” Al-Jubeir said the embassy had spoken with several Middle East scholars about serving on the panel, “but none of them wanted to speak on the panel when its intention seems not to seek truth but to malign.”

A Saudi official in Riyadh told Reuters on Friday that the Congressional report’s implications that Riyadh had a role in the Sept. 11 attacks was motivated by domestic electoral concerns. The official blamed the report’s condemnation on Democratic congressmen seeking to discredit President George Bush’s administration ahead of the US presidential election in 2004.

Prince Bandar ibn Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to the United States, said in a statement released Thursday afternoon -- his second in two days on the subject -- that it was “unfortunate that false accusations against Saudi Arabia continue to be made by some for political purposes despite the fact that the Kingdom has been one of the most active partners in the war on terrorism, as the president and other administration officials have repeatedly and publicly attested.” After reiterating the specific actions the Kingdom has made since Sept. 11, the ambassador said: “It is disappointing that despite everything we are doing, outrageous charges continue. They are not based in fact and only serve to denigrate Saudi Arabia, which is exactly what Bin Laden wanted to accomplish.”

“In a 900-page report, 28 blanked-out pages are being used by some to malign our country and our people,” Prince Bandar said in the statement. “Rumors, innuendos and untruths have become, when it comes to the Kingdom, the order of the day.”

Any notion that the Saudi government funded, organized, or even knew about Sept. 11 is “malicious and blatantly false,” said Prince Bandar. “Al-Qaeda is a cult seeking to destroy Saudi Arabia as well as the United States. By what logic would we support a cult that is trying to kill us?”