WASHINGTON Saudi's funding is probed

The princess is vehement in her denial that she gave money to terrorists.
COMBINED DISPATCHES
WASHINGTON -- President Bush's spokesman praised Saudi Arabia today as a "good partner in the war on terrorism," despite accusations that the wife of the Saudi U.S. ambassador might have financially supported Sept. 11 terrorists.
"He believes the Saudi government is a good partner," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer told reporters. The accusations are complicating White House efforts to win Saudi support for potential war against Iraq.
Fleischer refused to discuss the merits of an FBI investigation into the financial doings of Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Saltan.
Saudi officials say they are checking records to see how money from Princess Haifa might have eventually gone to supporters of the Sept. 11 attacks.
In trying to calm the latest strain in their alliance with the United States, they called "crazy" any suggestion she intended to support the hijackers.
Embassy officials spent the weekend having bankers pore over the records of Princess Haifa al-Faisal, wife of Ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan, to figure out how thousands of dollars in monthly payments from her account apparently ended up in the wrong hands, said Saudi foreign policy adviser Adel al-Jubeir.
Adamant denial
Princess Haifa vehemently denied suggestions Sunday that she helped fund terrorists involved in the Sept. 11 attacks, but confirmed that she gave money to a needy woman whose husband may have had ties to the hijackers.
"I find that accusations that I contributed funds to terrorists outrageous and completely irresponsible," said Princess Haifa in a statement issued late Sunday to Knight Ridder Newspapers.
"This is the time for people to come together to combat the scourge of terrorism so that others will not suffer the loss of loved ones," the princess said.
Some of the money apparently went into the accounts of two men who U.S. officials think provided financial support to hijackers.
A parade of senators, including some who doubted the princess meant to help terrorists, upbraided the Saudi government on Sunday's television talk shows for what they saw as years of complicity in anti-American radicalism.
Saudis have a history of "buying off extremism," even if only by averting their gaze from it, said Sen. Joseph Biden, D-Del., outgoing chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
It's "part of a saga where the Saudis don't know, have not checked, are not nearly conscientious enough in determining whether or not a 'charity' is genuinely a charity or a front for, or a back door for, terrorists or terrorist-sympathizing organizations or individuals," Biden said on CNN's "Late Edition."
Didn't join critics
President Bush's aides, for whom the matter is a troubling turn as they work to shore up Saudi support for a possible war with Iraq, did not join in the recriminations.
There might be a legitimate explanation for the payments, a senior White House official said.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, credited the Saudis with helping in the anti-terror war, in quiet ways that bring them no credit in the West but also do not attract the attention of fundamentalist elements at home.
Democratic Sen. Charles Schumer of New York saw that balancing act differently.
Saudis "have played a duplicitous game, and that is they say to the terrorists, 'We'll do everything you want, just leave us alone,"' he said on ABC's "This Week." "That game has got to stop."
Still, the lawmakers did not know whether the princess had meant for the money to go to Omar al-Bayoumi and Osama Bassnan. U.S. officials believe those men provided financial support to two of the Sept. 11, 2001, hijackers while the terrorists lived in the United States.
Monthly payments
Al-Jubeir said the princess sent monthly checks to a Saudi woman, Majida Ibrahim Ahmad, who was living in this country and who sought help paying for medical treatment. The princess gave her monthly checks of $2,000 for several years.
It came out only now that the woman was Bassnan's wife and that some of the money ended up with al-Bayoumi's family as well, he said.
Both Ahmad and her Saudi husband were deported this month.
It is extremely rare for Saudi women to be involved in public controversy or to issue press statements.
A spokesman for the Saudi embassy in Washington said he believed Sunday's statement issued to Knight Ridder was the first ever issued by Princess Haifa.
Princess Haifa's angry denial came in the wake of reports that the FBI was investigating a possible money trail from the Saudi Arabian government to two of the hijackers, Khalid al Midhar and Nawaf al Hazmi.
The reports said that money from the princess went to the Bassnan's family, when they were living in the United States. A friend of Bassnan, Omar al Bayoumi, had apparently helped al Midhar and al Hazmi, when they arrived in San Diego's Muslim community.
Basnan is believed to be back in Saudi Arabia after his deportation and al-Bayoumi is either there or in Britain, al-Jubeir said.
Saudi officials will probably question them, he said, but he noted pointedly that U.S. and British officials already interrogated them months ago.
Al-Jubeir said Saudis had bank officials in Washington, starting at 3 a.m. Saturday, begin going through the princess' electronic transactions, which include hundreds or thousands of payments to expatriate Saudi charities and citizens.
"That's when we discovered that some of the checks were endorsed to third parties," he said.
"To think that Princess Haifa, whose father was murdered by a terrorist in 1995, who's a mother, who's a grandmother, would write checks to people who give it to terrorists is crazy," he added.
Sens. Joseph Lieberman, D-Conn., and John McCain, R-Ariz., who together set up an independent commission that will investigate the terror attacks, joined Biden in criticizing Saudi conduct.
Saudi leaders "have to decide which side they're on," Lieberman said on CBS' "Face the Nation."
"For too many generations they have pacified and accommodated themselves to the most extreme, fanatical, violent elements of Islam, and those elements have now turned on us and the rest of the world."
Added McCain: "The Saudi royal family has been engaged in a Faustian bargain for years to keep themselves in power."