Posted on 07/04/2004 1:00:06 PM PDT by xzins
US orders military’s families to leave Bahrain Bloomberg DUBAI – The US ordered out the families of military personnel in Bahrain, its naval base in the Persian Gulf, and recommended most embassy staff and their families leave the country because of a possible terrorist attack.
The decision by the US Department of Defense will affect about 650 of the 4,500 people attached to the US Navy’s Fifth Fleet, the fleet’s spokesman, Commander James Graybeal, said in a telephone interview from the capital, Manama.
The US State Department will pay for most embassy staff and their families to exit the country, should they decide to do so. “The department has received information that extremists are planning attacks against US and other Western interests in the kingdom of Bahrain,” the State Department said in a statement.
Bahrain, home to the largest number of international banks in the region, is frequented by US and other citizens working in Saudi Arabia, because it’s regarded as more tolerant of Western social norms, including alcohol consumption. It has attracted more Westerners in the region following a series of terrorist attacks in Saudi Arabia, the world’s largest oil producer.
“The order is linked to the general security situation in the region,” Graybeal said, without being more specific. Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates and three other Persian Gulf monarchies produce about one fifth of the world’s oil supply.
Aleta Wenger, a spokeswoman for the US embassy in Bahrain, didn’t return a telephone message.
“Credible information indicates that extremists remain at large and are planning attacks in Bahrain,” the State Department said in the statement.
Bahrain, which refines Saudi crude oil for export, is attached to Saudi Arabia via a 12-kilometre causeway and hosts banks, such as Citigroup, BNP Paribas and HSBC Holdings, that cater to individual and corporate clients on the mainland.
Citigroup, the world’s largest financial services company, won’t withdraw any of its 250 staff from its Bahrain office as no Americans are among them, a spokesman for the bank in Dubai said. The bank holds about $30 billion in offshore assets in Bahrain, mainly on behalf of clients in Saudi Arabia, said the spokesman, who didn’t want to be identified.
Islamic militants last month beheaded US citizen Paul Johnson, a 49-year-old Lockheed Martin engineer in Saudi Arabia, and posted pictures of his body on the Internet.
Nowadays I'm not so sure my paranoia would be out of place.
Are you sure he would have shot you? I thought smuggling in the arab countries warranted getting a finger or an arm chopped off?
I hadn't thought of that....good thing I didn't...;^)
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