Reuters • AP

WASHINGTON, 25 October 2003 — Saudi Arabia’s anti-terrorism cooperation with the United States has increased sharply since a terrorist attack in Riyadh in May that killed 35 people, a senior administration official said.

It is “not entirely accurate to say that before May 12 the cooperation was unsatisfactory,” the State Department official said. He added that the Saudis were much more inclined than before to share information with US law enforcement officials.

In addition, he said Thursday, no other country has killed more Al-Qaeda militants over the past five months than Saudi Arabia.

The official, a top administration expert on Saudi issues, spoke to a group of reporters on the condition that he not be identified by name or position.

Both Saudi and US officials have linked Al-Qaeda to the May bombing, which targeted three residential compounds in Riyadh.

Other administration officials also have praised the more assertive Saudi posture on terrorism in recent months.

Assistant Secretary of State William Burns said in a speech three weeks ago that Crown Prince Abdullah “has acted decisively to strengthen counterterrorism cooperation,” especially since the May attacks.

May 12 “was a wakeup call, or, the ‘mother of all wakeup calls,’” said the official. “It was really a staggering experience for the Saudis.” After those attacks, he said, “we ended up setting up a joint operations center, with our operational people working in the same rooms, the same office complex with the Saudis, sharing intelligence real time, working on the same computer terminals, with the same information.

“There was a much greater sense of being proactive,” he added. “We now also have a joint task force on terrorist financing. This is not merely setting up a committee, this is actual operational work in sifting through financial records and targeting and evaluating and going forward.”

The US official praised the Kingdom’s resolve to hunt down terrorists, particularly operatives of the Al-Qaeda network responsible for the Sept. 11 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

“Since May, no other country that I know of has captured or killed as many Al-Qaeda or has lost as many of her own officers in the line of duty in this effort,” he said.

“The Saudis have lost several dozen officers in the shootouts that have been occurring with some regularity around the Kingdom. They are being proactive, they are not waiting for these guys to do something, they are going after them.”

He said Washington and Riyadh were sharing intelligence with greater volume and regularity, and rejected reports that the United States was unhappy with Saudi anti-terrorism efforts.

“It is a complete distortion,” he said, “to suggest that we are dissatisfied with what the Saudis are doing.

“We do continue to have a training relationship with the Saudis that existed before and independent of the Operation Southern Watch,” he said, referring to enforcement of the UN-mandated no-fly zone in neighboring southern Iraq.

“This is a robust relationship,” he said. “It has largely been air force and some air defense, and in addition to that we have a training relationship with the Saudi national guard. “We are now looking at expanding that relationship to include for the first time the Saudi Army, as well as a deeper relationship extending down to the brigade level so that younger, more junior officers are trained by our junior officers,” said the official.

“This is something the Saudis are very encouraging about,...very important as we discuss the future of the relationship.”