US:SAUDI ARABIA remains the world's leading source of money for al-Qaeda and other extremist networks and has failed to take key steps requested by US officials to stem the flow, the Bush administration's top financial counterterrorism official has reported.
Stuart A Levey, a treasury undersecretary, told a Senate committee on Tuesday that the Saudi government had not taken important steps to go after those who finance terrorist organisations, or to prevent wealthy donors from bankrolling extremism through charitable contributions.
"Saudi Arabia today remains the location where more money is going to terrorism, to Sunni terror groups and to the Taliban than any other place in the world," Mr Levey said under questioning.
He said the US campaign had succeeded in disrupting terrorist financing by freezing suspicious assets. It had gathered intelligence that could be used to identify extremists and disrupt their activities.
But under questioning by senators, Mr Levey also spoke of difficulty in getting Saudi Arabia to take the steps US officials consider necessary. He said the Saudis had been aggressive in going after terrorist cells within the kingdom, but said they had not lived up to promises to establish the kind of financial intelligence unit needed to trace terrorist money trails.
He said the Saudi government had not set up a charity oversight commission to track whether donations were going to extremists.
Mr Levey said the Saudi government had not moved to publicly hold accountable those within the Gulf kingdom who were the subject of enforcement actions by the US and other authorities.