DUBAI, Nov 4: Saudi Arabia's former intelligence chief, Prince
Turki al-Faisal, said on Saturday the Taliban had twice agreed to hand
over Osama bin Laden to the kingdom but reneged after the United States
bombed Afghanistan in 1998.
Prince Turki also told the Middle East
Broadcasting Centre (MBC) in an interview that he believed that Osama was
behind the Sept 11 suicide attacks, saying those who felt otherwise were
"turning a blind eye to the facts".
The prince, who served as
intelligence chief for 24 years until August, said spiritual leader Mullah
Mohammad Omar pledged at a meeting in June 1998 to turn Osama.
Taliban envoy Wakil Ahmad Muttawakil, now the movement's foreign
minister, had reiterated that vow during a visit to Saudi Arabia in July
1998.
"I asked Mullah Omar when I met with him and he agreed. He
said: 'We are ready'," Prince Turki said of the June meeting, when he had
first asked the Taliban to surrender the man Washington now accuses of
ordering the September 11 attacks.
But that changed three months
later, after the United States had carried out air strikes on Afghanistan
in response to bomb attacks in August 1998 on its embassies in Kenya and
Tanzania.
"In September I found Mullah Omar with a complete
change. He even used abusive words against the (Saudi) kingdom and the
people of the kingdom so I interrupted the meeting," he said.
Prince Turki said that the Taliban had also promised to prevent
Osama, who had been stripped of his Saudi nationality in 1994 for acts
against the royal family, from launching any attack against Saudi Arabia.
ENVOY TO TALIBAN: The prince, a senior member of the Saudi royal
family, had visited Afghanistan frequently as an envoy for King Fahd until
he was replaced as head of the oil-rich kingdom's intelligence apparatus
by Prince Nawaf, a brother to the monarch.
His unexplained
departure has led to speculation in Western media about his close ties to
the Taliban.
In the hour-long interview, Prince Turki never
mentioned Osama by name. But he criticised the Taliban, saying they were
to blame for the US attacks on Afghanistan because they continued to
reject Western calls to hand over Osama bin Laden.
"Unfortunately,
the Taliban government is the one that put itself in this predicament," he
said, adding that if they were unable to deal with Osama they should let
others do so.
"If they could not do it, they should step down and
let those who are capable solve this problem."
Asked who was in
charge, Osama or Mullah Omar, who is reported to be married to one of
Osama's daughters, Prince Turki, a brother to Foreign Minister Prince Saud
al-Faisal said:
"I don't know. It seems to me that there is
harmony between the two...The two use the same rhetoric."
Osama's
ambition, he said, was to "fight the whole world because he sees it as an
infidel, corrupt world and he will not stop until he is
terminated".-Reuters
