Officials in Saudi Arabia are refusing to honor US requests to freeze bank accounts that Washington suspects are linked to terror groups, slowing the US-led global war on terror, the New York Times reported Tuesday.
Riyadh's hesitation on the financial front has prompted the administration of US President George W. Bush to prepare to send a delegation of State Department, Treasury and National Security Council officials to resolve the matter.
A high-level Saudi official told the US daily on condition of anonymity that US requests for the freezing of assets allegedly linked to terrorist organizations had not been backed up with sufficient proof.
"This is the problem between us and the Americans," he said. "When they ask us to do something, we say 'Give us the evidence.' That's when they accuse us of helping the terrorists."
The crackdown on terrorist financing is an important component of Bush's war on terror, sparked by the September 11 attacks in the United States that left some 4,000 people dead.
Top US officials have repeatedly refuted reports that Riyadh was being less than cooperative in the US-led effort to stamp out terrorism, focused on nabbing top terror suspect Osama bin Laden and dismantling his al-Qaeda network.
They say Saudi interior ministry officials have fully cooperated with US federal investigators in Saudi Arabia on the criminal front, but similar cooperation on terror financing has been slow in coming.
One US official told the New York Times that Riyadh had been asked to freeze accounts bearing the names of those identified by Washington as having links to terrorist organizations, but he did not know of funds actually being seized.
"We cannot move without evidence, and no one has given us the evidence," the senior Saudi official told the US paper.
Those expected in Riyadh as part of the US delegation include US deputy assistant secretary of state Ryan Crocker, responsible for the Persian Gulf states, and R. Richard Newcomb, director of the Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control, the paper reported -- AFP
© 2001 Al Bawaba (www.albawaba.com)
