Saudis Cut Embassy Staffs of Iraq, Jordan and Yemen

The government here has ordered Iraq, Jordan and Yemen to sharply reduce their embassy staffs in Saudi Arabia, a move that follows a halt in Saudi oil deliveries to Jordan and new restrictions on Yemeni workers in the kingdom.

The actions quickly raised the pressure against nations thought to be aiding Iraq and marked a new move by Saudi Arabia to utilize its massive economic muscle to control the outcome of the Persian Gulf crisis.

In a carefully orchestrated series of diplomatic moves over the past two weeks, Saudi Arabia has put its economic allies on notice that future lucrative Saudi trade and contracts will depend on their response to the crisis and has clamped down on its Arab neighbors who are perceived to have cooperated with Iraq.

“Saudi Arabia has never asserted itself in this way before. We’re saying, ‘No more Mr. Nice Guy,’ ” said one diplomatic source.

The Saudi foreign minister, Prince Saud al Faisal, has held recent meetings with officials from Japan, South Korea and West Germany to underline the Saudi position. Saudi authorities credit such diplomatic moves with obtaining recent pledges of substantial financial contributions to the U.S.-led military buildup in the gulf and of aid to countries that were suffering most because of the U.N.-sanctioned trade embargo against Iraq.

“He made it very clear to them that their ability to receive post-crisis contracts is directly related to making pre-crisis contributions,” said one official familiar with the meeting.

In its most recent move, Saudi Arabia ordered Iraq, Jordan and Yemen to reduce their embassy staffs in the kingdom to three diplomats, a move that one source said could be “just the tip of the iceberg” in the cases of Jordan and Yemen unless the two nations take a firm stand against Iraq’s invasion of Kuwait and in favor of the international economic sanctions against Iraq.

“The facts on the ground as we see them are (that) Yemen and Jordan are in bed with the Iraqis,” one source said. “They’ve tried to convince us that they are not; we’ve given them every chance to prove they are not, but they’ve failed every test.”

Jordan’s King Hussein on Saturday denied any knowledge of Riyadh’s staff-reduction order, saying that he doubts his country even has 20 diplomats in Riyadh.

“Right now I have no knowledge of such action,” he said in an interview with Cable News Network. “It seems to me this whole thing is a fabrication.”

Reliable sources in Saudi Arabia, however, said that Saudi officials plan to continue stepping up the pressure against Jordan and Yemen “until at one point we (could) classify them as hostile countries,” according to one source.

King Hussein and Col. Ali Abdullah Saleh, the Yemeni president, have supported U.N. Security Council resolutions condemning Iraq’s Aug. 2 invasion of Kuwait, but they have only reluctantly backed economic sanctions against Baghdad, a major trading partner of both countries.

Public opinion in both Jordan and Yemen runs strongly in favor of Iraq in the confrontation with Saudi Arabia and its Arab and Western allies now arrayed with substantial military forces in the Persian Gulf region.

Yemen’s Saleh asserted Friday that an embargo of international air traffic with Iraq, a measure under consideration by the U.N. Security Council and expected to be voted on Tuesday, “would be an act of piracy . . . which looks to us more like banditry than international law.”

Saudi Arabia’s giant state-owned oil company, Saudi Aramco, decided earlier last week to cut off oil shipments to Jordan, a source of supply that had been providing nearly half of Jordan’s domestic needs since the Iraqi government of President Saddam Hussein overran Kuwait and provoked worldwide concern that it intended to push southward into Saudi Arabia.

Aramco said the cutoff was ordered because Jordan was about $46 million behind in payments for oil delivered during the past four or five months. Jordan was told Sept. 11 to either settle its account or face a cutoff, apparently after the Saudi government said it would not guarantee Aramco’s losses for unpaid oil shipments, according to sources familiar with the discussion.

Saudi Arabia had been shipping an average of 33,000 barrels a day to Jordan by way of a section of its Trans-Arabian pipeline. Iraq, which had been supplying 90% of Jordan’s domestic oil needs before the crisis, had continued to truck in about 45,000 barrels a day, according to sources in the Saudi capital.

“Aramco would not take a decision like this unless it clears it on a very, very high level of the government,” one source said. “It’s basically intended to say, ‘If you don’t play ball, we won’t help you.’ ”

At a press conference in Amman, Jordan, Energy Minister Thabit Tahir confirmed the Saudi action and said the decision would place a “very heavy burden on Jordan.”

“We weren’t surprised,” he said, admitting that Jordan was behind on its payments and insisting that Jordan’s contract with the Saudis provided only that interest be charged on overdue payments and did not specify any cutoffs in oil shipments.

Jordanian officials had recently notified Aramco that Saudi Arabia’s King Fahd had agreed to cancel $40 million of the debt, while Jordan had agreed to make prompt payment of the remaining $6 million, Tahir said. The subsequent cutoff order was “a breach of the contract,” he added.

The orders for embassy staff reductions here followed a series of recent tit-for-tat diplomatic ousters by Baghdad and Western capitals, and, together with the cutoff of Jordan’s Saudi oil supplies, seem likely to further harden attitudes in this tense region.

A Jordanian official told news agencies in Amman that 20 diplomatic staff members are being expelled, including the military, cultural, trade and labor attaches.

An estimated 30 Yemeni diplomats were ordered to leave Riyadh. An unidentified Foreign Ministry official told Reuters news agency in the Yemeni capital of Sana that only the ambassador and four aides would be permitted to remain in Saudi Arabia.

The ordered diplomatic staff reduction follows Saudi Arabia’s decision last week to eliminate the favorable status that Yemen’s 750,000 workers had enjoyed in the kingdom.

The Interior Ministry said it had cancelled all entry, residence and working privileges extended to unspecified foreign nationals, an order apparently directed at workers from Yemen, who unlike other foreign workers could obtain entry visas at the border and were exempt from the kingdom’s strict residence rules. The Yemenis have also conducted trade in the kingdom without needing a Saudi sponsor as required of other foreign nationals.

“This is going to cause problems for them (the Yemenis),” one source said of the new restrictions. “A lot (of workers) will leave; a lot will lose their privileges; a lot will fail in their businesses. . . . But why should we give anyone special privileges if they’re going to behave like this?”

Western diplomats said the move was likely to open up thousands of new jobs for workers from Egypt, which has committed thousands of troops to the multinational defense force now deployed in the Saudi desert.

Saudi officials are ultimately prepared to defer aid payments to Yemen and Jordan and to capitalize on Saudi Arabia’s political ties to tribal groups in both countries to create political support for Saudi Arabia’s position, according to diplomatic sources.

“Half the tribes in Yemen have pledged allegiance to the king, and that’s from the place where the (Yemeni) oil is,” said one source. “In theory, the Saudis could work havoc on the Yemeni political system.”

Times staff writer Nick B. Williams Jr. contributed to this story from Amman, Jordan.