Iraq

U.S. begins pulling out of Saudi Arabia

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia - U.S. military personnel have begun to withdraw from Saudi Arabia as part of a redeployment of America's forces in the Persian Gulf, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld announced Tuesday.

Most U.S. forces at Saudi Arabia's Prince Sultan Air Base will be gone by August, members of Rumsfeld's entourage said. The allied air command, headed by Lt. Gen. T. Michael Moseley, moved Monday from Prince Sultan to Qatar's al-Udeid Air Base.

The decadelong presence of American forces in this conservative Islamic kingdom has been a source of discomfort to Saudi Arabia's ruling monarchy, particularly after the U.S.-led war against Iraq, which the Arab world widely opposed.

Prince Sultan Air Base was built in the 1990s and made the site of a high-tech air operations center in 2001.

As many as 10,000 American personnel and 200 aircraft were assigned to the remote desert base at the height of the latest Iraq conflict. Troop strength already has been halved, U.S. officials said Tuesday. Eventually, only a small number of American troops will remain, primarily to train members of the Saudi military.

Rear Adm. Dave Nichols, deputy air commander for Central Command, and other officials said the Pentagon has not decided whether to keep the Prince Sultan base "warm" - that is, keep a skeleton crew there so the base could be quickly restarted in an emergency.

"Nothing's going to be torn down," Nichols said. "It'll remain wired, but most of the computers and whatnot will be taken out."

Rumsfeld, who is touring the region, addressed more than 1,300 troops Tuesday at the base, then went to an opulent palace in Riyadh for a joint news conference with Prince Sultan bin Abdulaziz, the defense minister, for whom the base is named.

The Pentagon chief later met with Crown Prince Abdullah, the defense minister's half brother and Saudi Arabia's de facto leader, before leaving for Kuwait.

"We've had quite a time here together, haven't we," Rumsfeld told a member of the royal family after arriving at Riyadh Air Base aboard a U.S. C-17 transport.

Rumsfeld said the planned American withdrawal from Prince Sultan Air Base was part of efforts to "refashion and rebalance" the U.S. military posture in the region after the American-led victory over Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq. The realignment also could include bases in Europe, Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld said "there is no question" that the victory in Iraq has changed the U.S. security requirements in the region. American officials have been steadily reducing the number of personnel and aircraft at the Saudi base since the air war began winding down. Allied aircraft haven't dropped a bomb in more than a week.

U.S. commanders have chafed for years about restrictions the Saudis put on the use of a base the Americans practically built from scratch after 19 servicemen were killed in a 1996 barracks bombing in Dhahran.

Prince Sultan, for example, said before the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that he would never allow his namesake base to be used for U.S. attacks on Arabs or Muslims. The Saudis tried to suppress news of the base's use in the Iraq war and limited the kinds of missions that could be flown from there to Afghanistan.

Even the amount of money that each nation has spent on the military partnership has been kept quiet, although U.S. commanders say the Saudis provided free fuel for American planes.

While Saudi officials said they didn't request the withdrawal, the action could pre-empt critics of the ruling family, including Saudi-born terrorist Osama bin Laden. The fugitive al-Qaida leader, who is believed to have a well-entrenched cadre of supporters in Saudi Arabia, has assailed the monarchy for permitting U.S. troops on Saudi land, which includes Islam's two holiest places, Mecca and Medina.

Jamal Khashoggi, editor of the Abha-based Arabic newspaper al-Watan, said Saudis welcomed an end to the American military presence.

"Saudi Arabia is proud of its independence and sovereignty," Khashoggi said. "Saudi Arabia has a special position as the cradle of Islam. It was very awkward for us throughout to have American troops in the kingdom."

- Information from Knight Ridder Newspapers and the Associated Press was used in this report.

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