<h2>Saudis less eager to host U.S. troops</h2>

OFFICIALS: PRESENCE IS POLITICAL LIABILITY
BY DAVID B. OTTAWAY
AND ROBERT G. KAISER
Washington Post

WASHINGTON -- Saudi Arabia's rulers are increasingly uncomfortable with the U.S. military presence in their country and may soon ask that it end, according to several Saudi sources. Such a decision would deprive the United States of regular use of the Prince Sultan Air Base, from which American power has been projected into the gulf region and beyond for more than a decade.

Senior Saudi rulers believe the United States has ``overstayed its welcome'' and that other forms of less conspicuous military cooperation should be devised once the United States has completed its war in Afghanistan, according to a senior Saudi official. The United States has been using a state-of-the-art command center on the Prince Sultan base that was opened last summer as a key command-and-control facility during the Afghan conflict.

Saudis give several reasons for deciding that the Americans should leave, beginning with their desire to appear self-reliant and not dependent on U.S. military support. The U.S. presence has become a political liability in domestic politics and in the Arab world, Saudi officials say. The Saudi government has also become increasingly uncomfortable with a role in U.S. efforts to contain Saddam Hussein, and earlier ruled out use of Saudi territory as a base for bombing raids on Iraq.

The withdrawal of U.S. aircraft would end an American presence that began during the Persian Gulf War and, administration officials warned, would seriously undermine America's ability to protect Saudi Arabia or Kuwait as well as carry out all future operations in Iraq.

Past and present U.S. officials said a Saudi decision to ask the Americans to pull forces out of their country could also complicate the Saudi-American relationship, which was put under great strain by the events of Sept. 11, and appear to give the impression of rewarding Osama bin Laden, who has vilified the royal family for hosting U.S. soldiers, about 5,000 at the present time.

Asked whether Saudi Arabia has told the United States it will ask for an American withdrawal, Victoria Clarke, the assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, declined to answer. ``We have a very good relationship with the Saudis,'' she said Thursday night, and ``we will continue to work with them in as cooperative a fashion as possible as we go forward.''

Sen. Carl Levin, D-Mich., chairman of the Armed Services Committee, said this week that the United States should consider moving its forces out of the kingdom. ``We need a base in that region, but it seems to me we should find a place that is more hospitable.... I don't think they want us to stay there.''

Saudi officials who spoke about a U.S. withdrawal emphasized that nothing would be done precipitously. They said Crown Prince Abdullah was sensitive to the need to avoid creating the impression that he was responding to pressure from bin Laden. These Saudis emphasized that Saudi-American relations would remain close, and would continue to include a military component. The U.S. ``would still have access'' to Saudi bases after a withdrawal, one adviser to the crown prince said.

U.S. troops went to Saudi Arabia in 1990 to fight the Persian Gulf War against Iraq at a moment when both countries feared that Iraq might march from Kuwait into the kingdom. The two governments never signed an agreement about their presence in the country.

The Saudis were nervous about the U.S. presence in their country from the beginning. Saudi Arabia was never colonized by a foreign power, and has long been sensitive about its independence. And the royal family has a special obligation to the Muslim world as guardian of Islam's two most holy places, Mecca and Medina.

Bin Laden has made expelling the Americans from Saudi Arabia an overriding objective. ``There is no more important duty than pushing the American enemy out of the holy land'' of Arabia, he said in 1996.

U.S. officials say the two countries no longer share a common view on security for the region now that Saudi Arabia has engineered a detente with Iran, its traditional rival in the region, and does not consider Iraq a major security threat.

One big problem for Abdullah, said several past and present officials, is anti-American sentiment in Saudi society. ``For the first time since 1973, we actually have a situation in which the United States is so unpopular among the public that the royal family now thinks its security is best served by publicly distancing itself from the United States,'' remarked Charles Freeman Jr., a former U.S. ambassador to Riyadh and frequent visitor to the kingdom.

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