PRESIDENT Clinton yesterday threw his weight behind a Pentagon investigation into the terrorist truck bombing that killed 19 US soldiers in Saudi Arabia.
Mr Clinton telephoned the retired general in charge of the investigation and told him he was ready to use the weight of his office to "break through any bureaucratic clutter", the White House spokesman, Mr Michael McCurry, said.
Gen Wayne Downing has until August 15th to establish the circumstances surrounding last month's bombing in Dhahran, review conditions at other military sites in Saudi Arabia and make recommendations to the US Defence Secretary, Mr William Perry.
Mr Clinton told Gen Downing that anything he needed for the investigation, "I stand ready to make available as commander-in-chief", Mr McCurry said.
Mr Clifton's personal involvement in the matter follows Senate hearings in which Mr Perry and senior military commanders were criticised for security lapses, blamed in part on inadequate Saudi co-operation.
Meanwhile, Britain and France have been warned to pull their troops out of Saudi Arabia by one of the fiercest opponents of the Saudi regime and of the US presence in the Gulf, according to the London Independent.
According to the newspaper, Mr Osama Bin Laden (40), a Saudi dissident, has been accused by western and Arab governments of being "the financier of an Islamic international." In an interview published yesterday, he said the withdrawal of French and British troops was necessary to avoid the fate of the US soldiers killed by the bomb.
The Saudi dissident said that killing the Americans marked "the beginning of war between Muslims and the United States".
The attack came less than a month after four Saudi Islamic militants were executed for a November car bomb attack against a US military office in Riyadh that left five Americans and two Indians dead.
"Not long ago, I gave advice to the Americans to withdraw their troops from Saudi Arabia" Mr Bin Laden said in the interview conducted in Afghanistan to which he has reportedly returned from Sudan with hundreds of his mujahedeen guerrillas. The French and British governments needed the same advice, he said.