World Tribune.com
Great Deals from Dell 120x90

Saudis confirm Iraq war will end U.S. presence in kingdom

SPECIAL TO WORLD TRIBUNE.COM
Wednesday, February 12, 2003

ABU DHABI Ñ Saudi Arabia has confirmed that Western military troops will leave the kingdom later this year.

Saudi officials said U.S., British and French forces would leave the kingdom after the conclusion of a war against Iraq. They said Saudi Arabia would relay a formal request to NATO countries to end their military presence once the regime of President Saddam Hussein is toppled and order is restored in Iraq.

More than 5,000 Western troops, most of them U.S. Air Force personnel, are deployed in the Prince Sultan Air Base, according to a Middle East Newsline report. Saudi Arabia has permitted the NATO members use of the air base to monitor the no-fly zones in northern and southern Iraq.


Recent studies by leading medical universities prove soy enhances your body's ability to fight obesity and the risk of heart disease. Click here to learn more.   <% ' Value for the url being requested url=trim(request.querystring("url")) ' if no url is detected then show then ' show a page with links if url="" then %> <% ' if there is a url value detected add it to the db ' and redirect the browser to the url else %><% ' Varible for the PC IP address ip=request.servervariables("remote_addr") ' name of the db that will track the clicks accessdb="/fpdb/clicks.mdb" ' Build a connection to the db cn="DRIVER={Microsoft Access Driver (*.mdb)};" cn=cn & "DBQ=" & server.mappath(accessdb) ' Create a server record set object set rs = server.createobject("ADODB.Recordset") ' SQL statement that will insert the url and the ip address sql = "insert into clicks (url,ip) values('"& url &"','"& ip &"')" ' insert the values into the db rs.open sql, cn ' kill the recordset set rs=nothing ' redirect to the url response.redirect url %><% end if ' end check for a url value %>

But Saudi Deputy Defense Minister Prince Khaled Bin Sultan said he expects the United States and its allies to end the no-fly zones over the next year. He said this will prompt the departure of the Western military forces from the kingdom.

"The presence of American, British and French forces in the Prince Sultan airbase in Al Kharj was for a precise reason, that is the control of the southern exclusion zone," Khaled said in an interview to the Saudi weekly Okaz. "If that reason goes away, the presence of U.S. and other forces will end."

Saudi officials have maintained that the Western military presence in the kingdom was temporary. But this was the first time a senior Saudi official publicly linked the termination of the foreign troop presence to developments in Iraq.

Earlier, U.S. officials said Crown Prince Abdullah Bin Abdul Aziz relayed to President George Bush a Saudi decision to revise the kingdom's defense and security strategy. The new strategy does not envision the maintenance of U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia. But the kingdom stressed that it will continue military and security relations with the United States.

Print this Article Print this Article Email this article Email this article Subscribe to this Feature Free Headline Alerts
Google
Search Worldwide Web Search WorldTribune.com Search WorldTrib Archives

See current edition of Geostrategy-Direct.com

Return to World Tribune.com Front Cover

New