Saudis sound 'alert' over ties with US

Separately in an interview published by The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday the prince also said the planned handover of power in Iraq will not work unless the country's new rulers have an army with real power.

In a speech to the Foreign Policy Association in New York, Prince Saud said he wanted to "sound the alert that the harmony of our long and fruitful relationship is threatened."

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Blaming elements of the media for demonising his country, the foreign minister cited a recent clutch of books that sought to portray Saudi Arabia's internal social and political makeup as one that nurtures extremism and feeds terrorism.

"Nothing could be further from the truth," he said. "After last week's events in Riyadh, I don't think any reasonable person can cast doubts about our commitment to waging a relentless war on terrorism."

A car bomb devastated a security forces building in the Saudi capital last Wednesday, leaving five people dead and 145 wounded.

A radical Islamist group with links to al-Qaeda has claimed responsibility for the blast in a statement posted on Islamist websites.

While al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was born in Saudi Arabia, Prince Saud stressed that his ideology and terrorist methodology had been developed in Afghanistan.

Saudi Arabia has been seeking to rehabilitate its name since it came out that 15 Saudi men were among the 19 hijackers involved in the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

Equating the actions and ideologies of the hijackers with those of the Saudi people as a whole was, Prince Saud argued, not only erroneous but also counter-productive in the war against terrorism.

"It is ironic that those who most vociferously attack Saudi Arabia are unwittingly serving the purposes of al-Qaeda," he said.

"The attacks lead to undermining a country that is probably most capable of not only waging the war against (al-Qaeda), but also in preventing (al-Qaeda) spreading their cultist ideology in the Islamic world."