ARAB-US RELATIONS - Oct. 18 - Saudi South-West Seen As Centre Of Al Qaida Activity.

A report in the IHT says: "[US] investigators have found evidence that an active branch of Osama bin Laden's Qaida network was operating mainly in areas of southwestern Saudi Arabia", where a core of young men, who acted as "muscle" to seize control of the airplanes in the Sept. 11 attacks on the US, were assembled. Beginning in the spring of 2000 and continuing through December, the men departed for the US one or two at a time, with some of them travelling through Germany and Chechnya. It is not certain whether the recruits knew the exact nature of the operation being planned. It is likely that they left knowing only that they were to take part in a terrorist operation "in a certain time, at a certain place", according to a US official. US investigators say there was a more active Bin Ladin network in Saudi Arabia than previously thought. Coming from mostly middle-class families with no obvious connections to radical groups, the men engaged in the Sept. 11 attacks blended easily into the stream of thousands of Saudi visa applicants who pass through the US Embassy in Riyadh or the US Consulate in Jeddah. The US authorities identify nine Saudis among the 19 suspected hijackers. But Saudi officials question whether their citizens were involved, while complaining that the US is slow in providing investigative leads. Interior Minister Prince Nayef Bin Abdulaziz told the Saudi Press Agency on Oct. 14: "There were 400 people aboard the four planes and we find it strange that the focus is on Arabs, and Saudis in particular". Another leading Saudi official played down the significance of the hijackers' Saudi roots, arguing that because none of them came from the Central Region, or Naj'd, the base of the Saudi monarchy, they were simply "derailed" individuals outside the "fabric" of the kingdom. But top Saudi officials acknowledge that Saudi citizens were in all probability on the planes (see Saudi Arabia).