May 15, 2003	Thursday	Rabi-ul-Awwal 12, 1424

WASHINGTON, May 14: The United States on Wednesday gently criticized Saudi Arabia for not doing enough to prevent the deadly suicide bombings in Riyadh, but insisted that Saudi authorities remain stalwart allies in the “war on terrorism”.

Wary of alienating a key ally, US officials refrained from directly attacking the Saudi government but made clear they did not believe Riyadh had been responsive to recent terrorist threats.

“There is hard work ahead,” national security adviser Condoleezza Rice told reporters at the State Department’s Foreign Press Center.

“We have had good cooperation with the Saudi government, and I am sure that in the wake of this terrible incident in Riyadh that we will seek to intensify our cooperation,” she said.

President George Bush, who spoke with Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz on Tuesday, remains “pleased” with Saudi Arabia’s overall performance, White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

“The president is pleased with the cooperation we have had from Saudi Arabia, not only in this instance, but since really the war on terror began,” he told reporters.

“Saudi Arabia is working well with us, and we will continue to work with the Saudis,” Mr Fleischer said, before pointedly reading from a May 1 State Department alert warning Americans that Washington believed terrorists were in “the final phases” of plotting attacks in the kingdom.

Recalling that warning and a similar advisory issued a day earlier by the US embassy in Riyadh, Washington’s ambassador to Saudi Arabia said he wished the Saudis had acted more promptly on those concerns.

“I obviously would have preferred a quicker response to our requests for additional security at these compounds,” said the envoy, Robert Jordan.

The requests were made at the end of last month, after US intelligence officials received information leading to the April 30 and May 1 alerts, he said.

“We approached the Saudi government on a number of occasions throughout the ensuing days, requesting additional security at these residential compounds,” Jordan told NBC television’s “Today” programme.

In a second interview on CBS television’s “Early Show”, Mr Jordan repeated the charge, but echoed Fleischer’s insistence that Washington is generally pleased with Saudi cooperation.—AFP