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

RIYADH, May 14: Saudi Arabia said on Wednesday it would make the Al Qaeda pay for suicide bombings that killed 34 people.

The US embassy, which is sending home all but essential staff, said it would evacuate any of the 40,000 Americans in the country who wanted to leave.

Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud Al-Faisal promised to find those behind the bombings, the first major attack on US targets since the United States invaded Iraq.

“Saudi Arabia is committed to...striking with an iron fist all who are tampering with the country’s security,” he told a news conference in Riyadh.

“Whoever did this will regret it because they have unified this country’s determination to extract this cancer (terrorism) and ensure that it doesn’t return.”

A US official said a team of FBI agents was waiting in Germany for Saudi approval to head to Riyadh.

Officials and terror experts said the attacks bore all the hallmarks of the Al Qaeda network.

The British Foreign Office said after the blasts there was a “high threat” of more attacks against Western interests in Saudi Arabia. It said two of its citizens were missing.

WESTERN FIRMS STAY PUT: Despite the heightened security threat, many Western firms said they had no plans to walk away from the lucrative business to be had in the world’s biggest oil exporter, which also has a huge defence budget.

The bombings were carried out just hours before a scheduled visit by US Secretary of State Colin Powell, who has been on a Middle East tour to explain US policy after the overthrow of Iraqi president Saddam Hussein and has travelled on to Moscow.

Monday’s attacks could widen rifts between Riyadh and Washington, deepening American suspicions of an ally now seen as a source of Islamist militancy, and fuelling the resentment of many Saudis at US policy towards Iraq and the Palestinians.

Despite this anger, many Saudis said innocent expatriates living in their country did not deserve this.

“What does this have to do with Islam? These criminals are harming us Muslims more than anybody else,” said Nala al-Dhaher, a Saudi woman who lost her brother and friends in the attacks.

Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador in Washington, said in a statement of condolence to victims’ families that the perpetrators had committed a “crime against humanity”.

Saudi de facto ruler Crown Prince Abdullah denounced the attacks and vowed they would not destabilise the kingdom, where there have been several anti-Western attacks in recent years.

Assailants drove, guns blazing, into three guarded housing compounds for expatriates shortly before midnight and set off huge car bombs.

The bombers killed two Saudi soldiers and wounded two others at the main gate of one well-defended compound housing employees of US defence contractor Northrop Grumman Vinnell Corp subsidiary before blowing the front off a four-storey building housing unaccompanied or bachelor employees.

The company said seven US citizens and two Philippine nationals were killed. Of the 70 men who usually sleep in the building, 50 were out in the desert that night on an exercise.—Reuters