LONDON — BAe Systems has alerted its employees to an
imminent Al Qaida attack in Saudi Arabia.
BAe said the company has warned its 5,000 employees in Saudi Arabia of
an Islamic insurgency plot to target Westerners. About 40 percent of BAe's
workforce in Saudi Arabia is composed of Western nationals.
"We've raised our security status from amber to red," BAe spokesman
Walid Abu Khalid said. "We got intelligence that there is a threat from
terrorists. This threat is not specific to BAe. It's generic."
The BAe warning was the first issued by the company of an Al
Qaida-related strike. Western embassies have not reported the prospect of an
imminent attack.
But in Washington, the U.S. Homeland Security Department warned of an Al
Qaida attack outside of Iraq. The department, citing intelligence gathered
in February, did not elaborate.
"The intelligence continues to be analyzed by the intelligence community
and all appropriate information will be passed on to homeland security
partners," Homeland Security Department spokesman Brian Roehrkasse said.
"The department has no plans at this time to raise the threat level based on
this nonspecific information."
Over the last two years, more than 1,000 Western staffers of BAe have
left Saudi Arabia. The company has offered salary increases of nearly $2,000
per month for Westerners who remain in the kingdom.
BAe has been the leading foreign contractor of Al Yamamah, the project
that has brought more than $40 billion worth of aircraft and ships to Saudi
Arabia in the 1980s and 1990s. Over the last five years, Al Yamamah has
turned into a maintenance and training program.