Saudi bid to declassify US terror report fail

THE White House, facing a crucial meeting with Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, refused to declassify part of an intelligence report on possible links between individuals in the Saudi government and some of the September 11 hijackers.

Declassifying 28 pages of material, as has been requested by the Saudi government and some members of Congress, would “compromise our national security and possibly interfere with the investigation of the events of September 11,” White House spokesman Scott McClellan said.

The decision came against a background of controversy over whether officials in Saudi Arabia had connections with the terrorists. Saudi Foreign Minister Saud al-Faisal, who flew to the US on Monday, was to meet later with Bush, McClellan said.

The Saudi minister had said that his country has “nothing to hide.”

In the London-based pan-Arab daily Ashram al-Awsat yesterday, Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef acknowledged that some of the Muslim militants arrested or killed in recent Saudi police raids may have been trained inside the Saudi kingdom. “Most of them received their military training in al-Qaida camps in Afghanistan and a small number perhaps were trained on farms and the like inside the country,” Prince Nayef was quoted as saying.

Sen Bob Graham, Democrat, Florida, a presidential candidate and the co-chairman of a congressional committee investigating the September 11, 2001, attacks, called on Monday for Bush to declassify a section of the 850-page congressional report dealing with foreign support for the hijackers. Another Democratic presidential candidate, Sen John Kerry, agreed.