SAUDI ARABIA - The Iraq Challenge & The Wahhabi Angle.

The most immediate challenge to both the US and the royal regime of Saudi Arabia is the situation in Iraq, where a Sunni Arab insurgency has been followed recently by a Shiite uprising spearheaded by a 31-year-old firebrand called Muqtada Al Sadr, a religious figure who has succeeded an Ayatollah father executed in 1999 by the Baathist regime of Saddam Hussein. Iraq now seems to be drifting towards civil war, which has been the declared objective of the radical Wahhabi network of Osama Bin Laden's Al-Qaeda.

Such a war would have serious implications for Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the rest of the six Gulf Co-operation Council states which have large Shiite communities.

Abu Musab Al Zarqawi, a senior Al-Qaeda operative said to be based somewhere within Iraq's Sunni triangle, has pledged to carry out more attacks on US troops and the Shiites in Iraq, according to an audiotape highlighted on April 6 by the media. (The US has offered a $10m reward for his capture, saying he is trying to build a network of foreign militants in Iraq and to trigger a Sunni-Shiite civil war. The 33-minute audiotape appeared on a Website known as a clearinghouse for militant Islamists' messages. The Website on which the tape appeared had a transcript heading saying Zarqawi is in Iraq. Zarqawi is a Jordanian veteran of the Afghan war accused by US officials of co-ordinating the Iraqi Jihad, or Muslim holy war).

The voice on the tape tells Iraq's Shiites: "We will not let you off, you snakes of evil, until you lift your hands off our mosques and stop shedding the blood of Sunnis and helping the enemies, the crusaders and Jews, against Muslims". He was referring to Shiites who, according to news reports in 2003, had taken over Sunni mosques in predominantly Shiite areas of Iraq.

In the same tape, Zarqawi claims responsibility for a wave of attacks that have hit coalition forces from the US and other nations since American troops captured Baghdad last April. The speaker claims responsibility for a car bombing of a Baghdad hotel on March 17 that killed seven people. The reference was an indication the tape was made recently. The speaker also says his group had staged the suicide bombings in front of the entrance to Imam Ali's Mosque in Najaf in August 2003 which killed a big number of Shiites including Ayatollah Mohammed Baqer Al Hakim, spiritual leader of Iraq's largest Shiite party, the Supreme Council of the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI).

Earlier this year US authorities in Iraq said they had intercepted a memo from Zarqawi addressed to Al-Qaeda's leadership indicating his role in a plan to trigger a Sunni-Shiite civil war in Iraq. (Zarqawi was among six Islamic militants given the death penalty in absentia by Jordan's state security court on April 6 for their role in killing a US diplomat. Zarqawi was already sentenced to death in absentia last year for plotting attacks on Westerners).