The US is investigating a report that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi last year planned to assassinate the crown prince of Saudi Arabia, President George W. Bush said Thursday.
The US government has approached Libya over alleged contacts with Saudi dissidents, the State Department said, adding that for the moment it was not in a position to say whether the plot reported by The New York Times was true.
But any confirmation of the report could deal a blow to Qaddafi's attempts to break the isolation of his country, which last year agreed to give up its weapons of mass destruction programs.
PHOTO: AFP
"What I can tell you is that we're going to make sure we fully understand the veracity of the plot line. And so we are looking into it," Bush told a press conference at the end of the Group of Eight summit in Sea Island, Georgia.
"When we find out the facts, we will deal with them accordingly," he added.
State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in Washington that the US last year approached Libya about reports that the Qaddafi regime was "in contact with Saudi dissidents who have threatened violence against the Saudi royal family.
"We raised those concerns directly with the Libyan leadership and they assured us that they would not support the use of violence for settling political differences with any state," Boucher said.
Washington was "monitoring Libya's behavior carefully," the spokesman went on, adding: "We have subsequently reinforced our concerns in various meetings, including meetings at the high levels."
Boucher said that Libya has taken significant steps "to eliminate most of its contacts with terrorism, but we're not yet at a point to certify, either with regard to these specific allegations or to other things, that Libya has totally eliminated its contacts and support for terrorism."
The Times said two people involved in a plot to fire rockets at a motorcade of Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz had been detained in the US and Saudi Arabia.
The plot is being investigated by the US, Saudi Arabia and Britain, people with knowledge of the case told the daily.
A senior Bush administration official was quoted as saying that the emergence of convincing evidence that Qaddafi ordered or condoned an assassination and terror campaign could cause a "180 degree" change of US policy toward Libya.
The two detained over the plot were named as Abrurahman Almoudi, an American arrested in October for violating a US ban on travel to Libya, and Colonel Mohamed Ismael, a Libyan intelligence officer captured by Egyptian police in November after he fled Saudi Arabia.
Almoudi reportedly said he met twice with Qaddafi in June and August of last year to discuss the assassination.
Despite its agreement with Britain and the US to end its weapons programs, Libya remains on a list of state sponsors of terrorism.
Bush told the press conference "I don't talk to Colonel Qaddafi. I have sent a message to him that if he honors his commitments to resist terror and to fully disclose and disarm his weapons programs, we will begin a process of normalization, which we have done.
"We have begun that process. And now we will make sure he honors his commitment," the president added.
Conjoined twins Lori and George Schappell, who pursued separate careers, interests and relationships during lives that defied medical expectations, died this month in Pennsylvania, funeral home officials said. They were 62. The twins, listed by Guinness World Records as the oldest living conjoined twins, died on April 7 at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania, obituaries posted by Leibensperger Funeral Homes of Hamburg said. The cause of death was not detailed. “When we were born, the doctors didn’t think we’d make 30, but we proved them wrong,” Lori said in an interview when they turned 50, the Philadelphia Inquirer reported. The
IN PURSUIT: Israel’s defense minister said the revenge attacks by Israeli settlers would make it difficult for security forces to find those responsible for the 14-year-old’s death Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Saturday condemned the “heinous murder” of an Israeli teenager in the occupied West Bank as attacks on Palestinian villages intensified following news of his death. After Benjamin Achimeir, 14, was reported missing near Ramallah on Friday, hundreds of Jewish settlers backed by Israeli forces raided nearby Palestinian villages, torching vehicles and homes, leaving at least one villager dead and dozens wounded. The attacks escalated in several villages on Saturday after Achimeir’s body was found near the Malachi Hashalom outpost. Agence France-Presse correspondents saw smoke rising from burned houses and fields. Mayor Amin Abu Alyah, of the
Australian police yesterday said a 40-year-old itinerant with mental illness was behind a Sydney shopping center stabbing rampage that killed six people, including a new mum whose nine-month-old baby is still in hospital with serious wounds. New South Wales Police Assistant Commissioner Anthony Cooke said the assailant — who was shot and killed by a senior police officer at the scene on Saturday — was Queensland man Joel Cauchi. Five women and one male security guard were killed in the attack as Cauchi roved through a packed shopping center in the city’s Bondi Junction neighborhood with a large knife. Twelve more people
A prominent Christian leader has allegedly been stabbed at the altar during a Mass yesterday in southwest Sydney. Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel was saying Mass at Christ The Good Shepherd Church in Wakeley just after 7pm when a man approached him at the altar and allegedly stabbed toward his head multiple times. A live stream of the Mass shows the congregation swarm forward toward Emmanuel before it was cut off. The church leader gained prominence during the COVID-19 pandemic, amassing a large online following, Officers attached to Fairfield City police area command attended a location on Welcome Street, Wakeley following reports a number