Author: James Dao
Publication: The New York Times
Date: June 13, 2003
The government of Saudi Arabia said
today that it has fired several hundred Islamic clerics and suspended more
than 1,000 others for preaching intolerance, part of a broader campaign
against terrorism.
At a news conference held one month
to the day after terrorist bombs killed more than 30 people in Riyadh,
the Saudi government also announced that it has implemented new regulations
intended to prevent the flow of Saudi money to terrorist groups overseas.
Saying that last month's bombings
had "galvanized" his government, Adel al-Jubeir, a senior foreign policy
adviser to Crown Prince Abdullah, asserted that Saudi Arabia has done more
than any other country to ensure that its money does not "get used for
evil."
"We will go after those who use
religion to justify such behavior, which is alien to any faith, in particular
our Islamic faith," Mr. Jubeir said at the Saudi Embassy here.
For the Saudis, who spend millions
of dollars annually on public relations in the United States, today's announcements
were the latest effort to counter assertions that Saudi Arabia is a breeding
ground for Islamic extremism and a major financier of terrorist groups
like Al Qaeda and Hamas.
Critics scoffed at the Saudi Embassy's
assertions that they had "closed the door on terrorist financing and money
laundering."
William F. Wechsler, a National
Security Council official in the Clinton administration who has studied
terrorist financing, said the Saudis had revealed few details of their
new regulations, making it difficult to evaluate their effectiveness.
"Let's see the laws and regulations,
and let others evaluate them, not take the Saudis word for it," he said
in a telephone interview. "Let's see that they are meeting international
standards. Let's see the enforcement."
Richard A. Boucher, the State Department
spokesman, called pledges by the Saudis and other Arab nations to stop
the flow of money to terrorist groups "a very important step forward."
But he said more needed to be done.
According to documents released
by the embassy, the Saudi government instituted new rules last month intended
to make it easier for regulators to monitor charitable giving overseas.
Those rules include requiring Saudi charities to keep their money in a
single bank account, preventing cash withdrawals from those accounts and
creating a new agency that will be the conduit for all Saudi charitable
giving outside Saudi Arabia.
But Mr. Jubeir acknowledged that
there were significant loopholes in the rules. For example, the Saudi regulations
will not apply to foreign-based charities that raise funds in the kingdom.
The rules also will not prevent
Saudi money from reaching schools, hospitals and other community institutions
run by the political wing of Hamas, the Gaza-based group that has taken
responsibility for a devastating suicide bombing in Jerusalem on Wednesday.
But Mr. Wechsler and other terrorism experts said it was impossible to
separate Hamas' political wing from its military operations. "It's a fantasy
to think you can just give money to the charitable wing and somehow you
are not helping a terrorist organization," Mr. Wechsler said.
The Israeli government also contends
that Palestinian documents seized by its troops during raids in the West
Bank last year provide evidence that organizations run by senior Saudi
officials have contributed large sums of money to Hamas and to the families
of suicide bombers.
The Saudi government does contribute
aid to the families of Palestinian suicide bombers, Mr. Jubeir said, but
he argued that such assistance did not incite terrorist acts.
"If the family's in need, they will
get the money," he said. "We're not saying, `Go blow yourself up and we'll
give you money.' "
