JEDDAH, Oct 28: CIA director Michael Hayden on Saturday personally delivered a message from US President George Bush to Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah, the official SPA news agency said.

Although it did not elaborate on what was discussed, Mr Hayden’s visit came a day after western naval forces in the Gulf were put on heightened alert for possible sea-borne attacks against the world’s largest oil-producing country.

Mr Hayden met the king, Saudi intelligence head Prince Miqren bin Abdul Aziz and senior advisers to the monarch at the Red Sea Port of Jeddah, the agency said.

Oil installations in Saudi Arabia are a ‘high-probability potential target’ for terrorist attack, but tight security measures are in place to protect them, interior ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki said on Friday.

“Coalition forces are taking prudent, precautionary measures and focusing maritime security operations in the Gulf on these possible threats,” a Bahrain-based spokesman for the coalition naval forces told AFP.

Lt Cdr Charlie Brown said the measures were ‘in response to recent threats to oil infrastructure in the Gulf, including public statements by Al-Qaeda leadership’.

In Washington, a senior state department official confirmed the existence of a threat, but added: “I can’t tell you the level of specificity or anything else.”

On Thursday Saudi security forces arrested two suspects at Sajir, 300 kilometres west of the capital, the London-based Saudi daily Al-Hayat reported on Saturday, citing an interior ministry spokesman in Riyadh.

One of those held had just finished his studies at King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals at Dhahran on the coast of the Gulf in the oil-rich eastern province.—AFP