U.S. Says Saudis Refuse To Freeze Bin Laden Assets

Saudi Arabia has so far refused to freeze the assets of Osama bin Laden and his associates, and has proved unwilling to cooperate fully in the investigation of the hijacking suspects in the Sept. 11 terror attacks, U.S. officials said Wednesday.

--very nice reply, thank you.

I am thinking that china is the real wild card here. On the one hand, they complain about their own islamic extremists, on the other hand they are going way, way out of their way to get into the middle east in a big way. Not only selling arms, but other facets of their infrastructurtte there. I tend to think-the chinese being long range planners, that they are secretly cultivating younger officers and other radicals to attempt a series of coups and install their own puppets in these various monarchies. The main reason is that they absolutely, 100% need oil in huge quantities, due to population pressures, and internal pressure to provide jobs and keep their people happy enough to not revolt, and even with their expanding manufacturing base, they won't be able to actually "pay" for the oil in the amounts needed. Ergo, they are planning on seizing it, cut us and the russians out of the picture to a significant degree, without firing a shot themselves.

I also expect them to try some funny business in afghanistan now, what with the caspian reserves at stake, and literaly in their backyard. I don't think they would appreciate permanent american bases on their border, ostensibly to help protect the new proposed pipelines through afghanistan being promoted by unocal. They must be assuming now that this is part of our "plan" in going into afghanistan, I doubt they think it's "all" about the wtc terr attack. Hmm, have to admit I think so, too, BTW.

Yes, ffranc's #100 was excellent, and your 127 is as well. I have no concern about the ME regimes getting together and manipulating the oil price -- it will cost them more than anyone -- but I am concerned about the PRC getting into such a position and ditto Russia, but to a lesser degree.

Agree that PRC is entirely justified and partially correct to be paranoid about U.S. military bases in Afghanistan, even in the alleged "short term."

If we can clean up in Afgh the way we hope, then (probably) find a way to surgically remove Saddam, the rest of the operation should be conducted largely as a law-enforcement/special ops enterprise, using diplomacy, carrot and stick, to get the (mostly behind-the-scenes if necessary) investigative cooperation from the other ME regimes.

;^)

I once had to host a non-westernized Saudi Sheik iaround Manhattan.

He was going NUTS with the lack of rules relative to what he lived under in Jeddah; he was a danger to himself & others.

On the other hand, I know some high level Saudi citizens with whom I've spent time in NYC & London.

They, by contrast with the Sheik, were very civilized, westernized, very sophisticated and of no danger whatsoever to others.

In Saudi Arabia I had the honor of eating the sheep's (it might have been a goat, it was 1979) eyeball in a tent outside Jeddah, which included a few of the lower level younger Princes. (There were about 2,000 Princes in Saudi Arabia, or "The Kngdom" at he time, so princes were not that much of a rareity.)

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