Fahd bin Abdul Aziz
Sultan Bin Abdul Aziz
Naef Bin Abdul Aziz
Salman Bin Abdul Aziz
Ahmad Bin Abdul Aziz
WorldSpace Announces the Creation of Four New Channels in Partnership With Leading Saudi Media Group, Business Wire, June 11, 1998
MONTREUX, Switzerland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--June 11, 1998-- At a press conference
this morning at the Montreux Palace, Noah Samara, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of
WorldSpace Corporation, announced a partnership with Sheik Abdul Aziz Abdul Kader of the
AMA group to produce four new broadcasting channels.
These new channels will be broadcast from the WorldSpace AfriStar satellite to be launched
over the Middle East and Africa in the fourth quarter of this year. WorldSpace is
launching a digital audio broadcast network for the developing world.
"This will set new standards of excellence in the world of Arab radio," Mr.
Samara said. "With this exciting new development WorldSpace has entered into a
partnership with one of the leading media companies in the Middle East.
Sheik Abdul Aziz is the Chairman of Tihama, a private media conglomerate, whose interests
range from advertising to newspaper and now commercial radio. In commenting on the
agreement, Sheik Abdul said: "This wonderful opportunity to partner WorldSpace in the
Middle East will allow us to broadcast to all the Arab people where ever they are. These
is unprecedented under current broadcasting systems. WorldSpace offers the Middle East a
new opportunity that will create a listening revolution in terms of choice, quality and
reception. It will also allow us to build new programming that will be sourced from our
considerable experience in this area and that will provide the kind of product that the
Middle East deserves."
Samara continued "The time for quality Arab programming has now arrived in the Middle
East. With the talent to which we have access, plus the WorldSpace system, our partnership
will be a major breakthrough in the world of Arab media."
Headquartered in Washington, DC, the WorldSpace business was founded in 1990 to provide
direct satellite delivery of digital audio communications
services to the emerging and underserved markets of the world, including Africa, the
Middle East, Asia, Latin America, and the Caribbean.
By the end of the decade, WorldSpace will have three satellites in orbit, with the first,
AfriStar, to be launched in late-1998, followed by AsiaStar and
AmeriStar. Each satellite will deliver 80+ channels of crystal clear audio programming
directly to portable receivers. This unique global service will
transmit quality information, education and entertainment programming to a service area
that includes 4.6 billion people.
U.S. investigation of Saudi bombing collapses, Reuters, June 21, 1998
NEW YORK, June 20 (Reuters) - The investigation of the 1996 truck bombing that
killed 19 American airmen in Saudi Arabia has collapsed following disagreements between
Washington and Riyadh, according to Sunday's New York Times.
The newspaper says that officials in the Clinton administration now believe it will never
be able to solve the case and learn who carried out the attack.\
Dozens of FBI agents, sent there two years ago to assist the Saudis in a joint
investigation of the Khobar Towers apartment complex bombing, have been pulled out, the
paper reports.
Only one agent remains, working as a legal attache and liaison to the Saudis, the Times
said.
About 500 people were wounded in the 1996 blast after a fuel truck packed with tons of
explosives detonated outside the apartment complex.
The Times says that both the Departments of Justice and Defence have said they would never
close the books on the probe.
According to the newspaper, there appears to be an "ill- feeling" between the
two countries as a result of evidence suggesting that Iran may have sponsored the attack.
The paper says that both the United States and Saudi Arabia have been striving to improve
relations with the new moderates in the Iranian government.
The Times also says that the Saudis described the FBI as "high-handed in its dealings
with the kingdom and reluctant to accept the validity of evidence gathered by the Saudis
that the attack was carried out by Saudi dissidents with the help of Iran."
FBI Director Louis Freeh once described the Saudi evidence as "hearsay," the
Times said.
The paper also said that the Saudis complained that the FBI refused to share intelligence
information with its counterpart in the investigation.
U.S. has not given up in Saudi bombing probe, Reuters, June 24, 1998
WASHINGTON, June 24 - The United States has not given up in its
investigation into the 1996 Khobar Towers truck bombing in Saudi Arabia that killed 19
U.S. servicemen, U.S.
Attorney General Janet Reno said on Wednesday.
"We will pursue whoever is responsible for as long as it takes ... to make sure that
they are brought to justice," Reno said at her weekly Justice
Department news briefing.
She responded to criticism from the families of some of the victims about the slow pace of
the investigation and the failure to determine those
responsible for the bombing.
"I think one of the most difficult roles a prosecutor has is, after having pursued
every lead and still not having evidence or having an ability to
prosecute people, to talk with families and tell them: 'Look, we are not going to give
up'," she said.
"We are going to pursue every lead. We're going to commit every resource we can to
this issue. But we may not have answers immediately. But we don't give up," Reno
said.
"This is very difficult for loved ones who want justice to be done, who want to feel
that justice has spoken. And so I understand how they feel. But I
want to stress to them again and again that we have not forgotten," she said.
Reno and FBI chief Louis Freeh last year publicly complained that Saudi Arabia has failed
to turn over key information in the investigation. The
complaints emerged after FBI agents were not allowed to question Saudi citizens, were not
told about arrests there and were unable to get access to
all the Saudi evidence.
U.S. faces dilemma two years after Saudi bombing, Reuters, June 25, 1998
By Charles Aldinger WASHINGTON, June 25 (Reuters) - Two years after a truck bomb
killed 19 Americans in Saudi Arabia, a slow moving and uneasy U.S.-
Saudi investigation has yielded no charges and created a dilemma in Washington over
relations with Riyadh and Iran.
Should the United States press loudly for a resolution of the June 25, 1996, deaths of
U.S. airmen at a barracks in Dhahran, risking strains with the
Saudis and stalling better ties with Iran, which denies involvement in terrorism?
Or should it wait patiently to see if justice is one day done?
Private experts on the Middle East say Washington must shelve frustration and allow the
faltering probe, led by the Saudis and aided by the U.S. Federal
Bureau of Investigation, to move at its own pace.
"We have to remain low key and mature about this. We can't pressure or cajole the
Saudis into full cooperation with the FBI because of major cultural
differences," said Judith Kipper of the private Centre for Strategic and
International Studies in Washington.
Defence Department spokesman Ken Bacon told reporters on Thursday that the United States
was frustrated with the results of the probe to date, but he
refused to lay blame.
"We are frustrated with our inability to bring the investigation to a close," he
said in a response to questions.
"There are a number of reasons for that."
Kipper and other analysts in and out of government noted that Washington has no proof that
Iran was involved in the blast and that hopes for continued improvement in ties with a
more moderate government in Iran are a critical factor in the equation.
"Our American value system demands that we bring those responsible to justice, but we
can't punish people without proof and nothing we can do will bring those young Americans
back," Kipper told Reuters.
Added Richard Haass, director of foreign policy studies at the Brookings Institution:
"It is not clear to me that we would gain anything by turning up the heat on
this."
Following two bombing attacks since 1995, most of the 5,000 or so U.S. military personnel
based in Saudi Arabia have been moved to remote Prince Sultan Air Base in the desert for
safety from terrorist attack at high financial cost to both countries.
But exactly two years after the fuel truck carrying 3,000 pounds (1,350 kg) of explosives
tore the face off Khobar Towers Building 131 in the town of Dhahran, the mastermind behind
the attack remains a mystery.
"We simply don't have a lot of cards to play now. And even if we had concrete proof
of Iranian involvement, that could be a major foreign policy problem, because we are now
dealing with a new government in Iran," Haass said.
But Philip Zelikow, a former National Security Council Official now with the John F.
Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, said Washington officials should at
least provide a report to Americans on where the investigation stands.
"It has been two years, hasn't it?" he said. "The families of victims
deserve it. I would expect no less from my county sheriff on a high-profile murder
case."
Attorney General Janet Reno and other officials have in the past chided the Saudis for
failure to provide all of their evidence to the FBI, but they deny a recent New York Times
report that the joint probe of the blast has virtually broken down.
The Saudis say the attack, similar to a bomb blast at a U.S.-run military training centre
in Riyadh in 1995 that killed five American troops, was carried out by internal
dissidents, But no charges have been brought.
"If this was done by fanatics, then it probably is dammed difficult to come
up a lot of information unless you torture people," one senior U.S. military officer
told Reuters privately.
"I don't think the Saudis are into that, and what good is information gotten that way
anyway?"
Experts say the moderate Saudi leadership prefers to remain low key about the Khobar
Towers investigation because they are not anxious to trumpet internal dissent.
Four Saudis confessed on state television in Saudi Arabia in April of 1996 for the 1995
bombing and were later beheaded.
They said they were influenced by Islamic groups outside of the kingdom.
U.S. soldiers in Saudi Arabia, meanwhile, held a memorial ceremony on Thursday to mark the
second anniversary of the more massive truck bomb attack which killed the airmen at their
barracks in Dhahran.
Saudi says aims to boost local military industry, Reuters, June 25, 1998
DUBAI, June 25 (Reuters) - Saudi Arabia's defence minister said his country was
boosting its capability to produce arms to meet its military requirements.
"The kingdom will be able in the near future to manufacture what its forces need,
either the National Guard or internal divisions or the armed forces," the official
Saudi Press Agency quoted Prince Sultan as saying in a report late on Wednesday.
The minister said the kingdom -- one of the world's biggest arms importers -- began its
defence industry by making rifles and ammunition, then produced machine guns and pistols,
and then started making spare parts for warplanes, tanks and radar.
The minister said the country now builds armoured personnel carriers (APCs), two versions
of which were displayed at an exhibition in Paris earlier this month.
The local APC began production in 1997 from a plant in Dammam, in eastern Saudi Arabia,
built by Al-Faris Heavy Industries.
Prince Sultan said he hoped for more collaboration with other Gulf Cooperation Council
(GCC) countries, which include Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United
Arab Emirates.
"We hope...to cooperate with GCC states in purchases and expanding military factories
in the Gulf states so that each state has a factory or factories," the minister said.
The political alliance of Gulf Arab states has said it aims to improve joint defence.
The GCC said on Wednesday it signed an $85 million deal with Hughes Aircraft Co of the
United States to build a regional radar system as part of the plans to unify defence.
Prince Sultan said the kingdom was against nuclear weapons. He added the "behaviour
of the West" in imposing sanctions on India and Pakistan for carrying out nuclear
tests while leaving out Israel showed "double standards".
Military analysts say Israel has a nuclear weapons capability, but the Jewish state will
neither confirm or deny the reports.
French defence minister to hold talks in Saudi, Reuters, June 27, 1998
DUBAI, June 27 (Reuters) - French Defence Minister Alain Richard will travel to
Saudi Arabia on July 5 for a one-day visit to discuss military cooperation between the two
states, France's ambassador to Saudi Arabia said on Saturday.
Hubert de la Fortelle told reporters Richard was expected to hold talks with Saudi Defence
Minister Prince Sultan bin Abdul-Aziz and other officials.
The ambassador said the ministers were expected to discuss the possible sale of French
tanks to the kingdom as well as broader issues of military cooperation.
France, which buys about one quarter of its oil from Saudi Arabia, is the kingdom's third
biggest arms supplier after the United States and Britain.
France is trying to convince Saudi Arabia to buy Leclerc main battle tanks made by
state-owned Giat Industries, similar to those sold for $3.62 billion to the neighbouring
United Arab Emirates in 1993.
It is competing with Britain and the United States for the major arms contract after its
tanks were tested in the Saudi desert at Riyadh's request.
One of France's major military contracts last year included the sale of a third Sawari II
air defence frigate to Saudi Arabia, worth about $1.5 billion, for which defence
electronics firm Thomson-CSF was the prime contractor.
Bilateral trade between the two countries stood at about $4.1 billion (15.4 billion
riyals) in 1997, de la Fortelle said.
Saudi newspaper reports had previously said that the value of bilateral trade in 1996
stood at about 14 billion riyals.