ABU DHABI Ñ The United States is examining the prospect that Oman or Qatar will be used as a base for any attack against U.S. forces preparing to attack Saudi fugitive Osama Bin Laden.

Gulf defense sources said the U.S. review of Qatar and Oman comes after Washington has dropped efforts to make Saudi Arabia a launching pad for an attack on Bin Laden, a Saudi national. The sources said Riyad has refused to allow the kingdom to be used for any attack on Bin Laden or the Afghan ruling Taliban faction.

Instead, the sources said, Saudi Arabia has allowed what they termed was limited use of a key air force base, Prince Sultan. They said the terms of the use remain vague.

Oman is currently hosting thousands of British troops and more than 110 British military planes as part of the Swift Sword-2 exercise. British Prime Minister Tony Blair was scheduled to hold talks in the sultanate over the weekend.

On Thursday, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld met Omani leaders. A senior U.S. official said Rumsfeld did not discuss the use of Oman as a U.S. base. But other U.S. sources said details of the use of the sultanate were being discussed at lower levels of the Pentagon.

The defense sources said the U.S. military has recommended that Oman serve as a launching pad amid Saudi resistance to unlimited use of its military bases.

Muscat is regarded as the most reliable U.S. ally in the Persian Gulf region. The U.S. military has about $3.5 billion worth of equipment in Oman, most of it in combat jets.

The senior U.S. official, who is traveling with Rumsfeld, said Oman has quietly provided support for numerous U.S. missions, including that of a 1998 offensive against Iraq. "The Omanis were the first state in the region to carry out that kind of cooperative defense relations with us," the official said. "It has run very, very smoothly all that time all the way up to the present."

On Thursday, the Pentagon announced approval for the sale of 12 F-16 multirole fighters to Oman.

Qatar is another option for the Pentagon's plans to attack Bin Laden, Gulf sources said. They said Qatar is completing the Al Udaid air base, with the longest runway in the Gulf. The facility is about 320 kilometers from Prince Sultan.

"The most tantalizing prospect for the American military is the use of Qatar's new air base for operations over Afghanistan and perhaps even as an alternative to the existing Saudi facility for U.S. air operations over Iraq," Simon Henderson, an analyst at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy said in a report released on Thursday.

Saudi Arabia has turned more insistent that it would not supply help for any U.S. attack against Arabs or Muslims. Earlier, U.S. officials reported an agreement with Riyad for the use of the Prince Sultan air base.

"This matter wasn't a part of discussion between the two sides," Saudi Defense Minister Prince Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz said after meeting Rumsfeld.

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