RIYADH, May 8: Saudi Arabia is determined to keep paying out “humanitarian” aid to the Palestinians despite Israeli allegations claims that the money funds “terrorism”, a senior official said on Wednesday.

The official said Israel levelled the “terror” charges against the kingdom in response to Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz’s recent meeting with US President George W. Bush, during which they initiated moves to defuse the Israeli-Palestinian crisis.

Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon called on Tuesday for an immediate end to Saudi Arabia’s support for Palestinian groups and families of suicide bombers.

Sharon, speaking hours after the suicide bombing near Tel Aviv killed 16, said Saudi Arabia would be included in a proposed Middle East peace conference only if the transfer of funds stopped.

The Israeli embassy in Washington had earlier released an 85-page document alleging “large sums of money transferred by Saudi Arabia to the Palestinians” had been used to finance groups like Hamas.

The document includes handwritten correspondence in Arabic, letters on what purports to be official Saudi and Palestinian letterheads, posters honouring fallen suicide bombers and lists of payments made to families of dead suicide bombers by organizations such as the Saudi Committee for Support of the Al-Quds Intifada, run by Interior Minister Prince Nayef bin Abdul Aziz.

“This is part of a political and media campaign led by Israel and its supporters in the United States against Saudi Arabia because of its principled stand in support of the Palestinians, which will not change,” the official said.

He said Israel had been “angered” by Abdullah’s April 25 talks with Bush in Texas during which the Saudi crown prince stood up for Palestinian rights, prompting the US president to “put pressure on Sharon to lift the siege on Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat” and start pulling out of West Bank towns.

Israel’s “campaign against the kingdom intensified after Crown Prince Abdullah’s visit to the United States ... which goes to show that the trip produced tangible results,” wrote the daily Al-Watan.

“Israel was alarmed by the Saudi (land-for-peace) initiative (endorsed by an Arab summit in late March) as well as by the success of Crown Prince Abdullah’s historic visit to the United States,” said Okaz, another Saudi newspaper.

The Jewish state thus “resorted to waging a media and political campaign against the kingdom, alleging that it ‘funds suicide operations’ and thereby supports terrorism,” the paper said.

Riyadh extends humanitarian aid to all Palestinians who suffer from Israeli “aggression,” including families of Palestinians who die carrying out “martyrdom operations,” according to the Saudi official.

This is because “these families are not to blame for what their children do in response to Israeli killings of civilians and demolition of their homes,” the official explained.

The Saudi ambassador to Washington, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, also rejected Sharon’s allegations.

“The kingdom has never supported and will never support terorrism, which it strongly condemns because it runs contrary to Islamic and humanitarian principles,” the ambassador said in a statement published on Wednesday.

Saudi Arabia, which raised 160 million dollars for the Palestinians in a telethon last month, grants 5,350 dollars to the family of each Palestinian suicide bomber.

UN condemns Israel: The UN General Assembly voted on Tuesday to condemn Israel’s six-week-old West Bank offensive, especially in Jenin, but 54 countries decided to abstain after the suicide bombing in Tel Aviv.

The timing of the vote so soon after the bombing prompted Israel’s UN mission to dismiss as “a farce” the resolution, which Arab nations drafted.

The resolution passed 74 to four, with 54 abstentions. The United States, Israel, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia voted “no”, while almost every European nation was among the abstentions.

The vote came after the Security Council last week deadlocked over an Arab-drafted resolution that would have denounced Israel for blocking a UN fact-finding mission to Jenin.

Palestinian UN observer Nasser al-Kidwa said he was not concerned by Tuesday’s high number of abstentions.

“It doesn’t matter,” he said. “It came down to a matter of principle, and we prevailed.”

Sponsored by Sudan on behalf of the Arab group of UN member-nations, the resolution “condemns the attacks committed by the Israeli occupying forces against the Palestinian people in several Palestinian cities’’.—Reuters