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U.S. pushing Saudis on charity donationsBut ultimatum over charitable donations denied
From John King
WASHINGTON (CNN) -- U.S. officials are urging Saudi Arabia to be more aggressive in cracking down on charities and businesses that the Bush administration says are financing terrorist activities. But a report suggesting that the administration is preparing an ultimatum to the Saudi government is premature and exaggerated, senior administration officials said Tuesday. White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said President Bush considers Saudi Arabia "a good partner who can do more" to aid U.S. efforts in the war on terrorism. "Saudi Arabia has been the subject of terrorist attacks, and Saudi Arabia has worked well with us." Fleischer said Tuesday. "We will always, in the long war on terrorism, work with our allies in a cooperative fashion so that we can together do more." Still, a senior White House official told CNN there is a debate within the White House about "how to extract more participation" from Saudi Arabia and other countries in the effort to crack down on terrorist financing. This official said the debate about potential sanctions or unilateral U.S. actions was "at a relatively low working group level." But the official said that top advisers to the president are aware of the deliberations and have not stopped them. "It is fair to say the attitude is, 'let's see what they come up with,'" this official said, cautioning, however, that no proposals have been forwarded to the president or requested by him. There is no "National Security Council task force" charged with keeping track of the effort to disrupt terror financing, as described in Tuesday's editions of The Washington Post, the officials said. Senior officials said that National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice and her deputy, Steve Hadley, made joking references to the existence of such a group in senior staff meetings Tuesday. Rice, according to one official, said that if there were such a group within the council, "it was made up of junior staffers and interns." Fleischer said an interagency administration working group on terrorist financing includes debate on a number of possibilities, but that no recommendation has been endorsed by that staff-level group -- let alone passed on to higher levels. Any working group proposal would go to the "deputy" level and then up to the "principals" level, meaning Rice, Secretary of State Colin Powell and, in the case of questions about terrorist financing overseas, Treasury Secretary Paul O'Neill and Attorney General John Ashcroft. 'One person's thoughts'The Post reported that there is an administration recommendation to tell Saudi Arabia that it has 90 days to mount a more-vigorous effort to choke off terrorist financing, and that the administration is poised to take unilateral actions if the Saudis resist. "You have read in the paper today what may be one person's thoughts," Fleischer told reporters. Other senior officials characterized the report as, in one's words, "an opportunistic shot by someone who thinks the Saudis need a nudge or a shove." This official noted that the story was guaranteed "good play" because of the recent reports of an FBI investigation into whether money from the Saudi government made its way through intermediaries to two of the September 11 hijackers. (Full story) "A working-level group ... an interagency group, (is) reviewing a number of ideas," Fleischer said, but he stressed that none of those ideas has "gone to the deputies level yet." Another official said talk of a 90-day ultimatum or an official "demarche" to the Saudi government through the U.S. Embassy in Riyadh were "ideas kicked around by people but not ideas that are anywhere close to making it to the president's desk." Conceding that an effort exists to get Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and other nations to accelerate their efforts to crack down on terrorist financing, Fleischer said, "We are very serious about making certain that nations do their level best to fight terrorism." But he also said, "One individual may have an idea that is not necessarily reflective of anything that may or may not come up" at more senior-level policy deliberations. "I don't place any hard reliance on any of the specific information in there." A senior official closely involved in the deliberations over administration policy toward Saudi Arabia said, "There are more than two sides of this story because of how complicated it is. (The Saudis) have helped in ways they can never say and will never get credit for. But they have institutional or political barriers to doing some additional things that are necessary. ... We have to remind them from time to time, and yes, perhaps we will have to be more aggressive at some point." This official went on to say, "The problem for us and for them in this environment is it leads to broad-brush" statements and characterizations that the Saudis are obstructing the war on terrorism more than they are assisting. A second senior official, who called the Post account "grossly overblown," seconds later voiced a view widely held in the White House: "If it puts a little fear into them to do more, I can live with it."
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