A presumed military center in the Gulf instead of Prince Sultan base
Saudi Arabia-USA, Politics, 5/4/2002

The commander of the USA Air Force Gen. John Jumpers has announced that the American Air Force can lead an air campaign in the Gulf from a "presumed" center for air operations on ships in case it is prevented from using the new leadership center in Saudi Arabia.

Gen. Jumpers said that the air force are given facilities in the area to support its air operations center in Saudi Arabia. He explained that "we prepare what can achieve that, not necessarily in Qatar." However, earlier news reports talked about increasing Saudi opposition to use the lands of Saudi Arabia to launch air raids against Iraq or Afghanistan. This situation, however, raised questions on the extent of the ability of the US to launch attacks on Iraq without using Prince Sultan air base.

Jumpers said: "we can resort to several other options and implement our mission." He said that the US naval and air forces carry out training that enable the implementation of any joint air operation to be carried out wether from the sea or from land, by using digital communications networks linked to computers and persons of thousands of km away. He said that the "teams of the computer sets can be put on the land without the need to be taken into the shipÉ. Some personnel can be kept on the ship and many others in a remote place.. and this is the principle of a presumed center."

Previous Stories:
  Strongest criticism from a Saudi Prince to the US; Sultan Bin Turkey for joint Arab delegation   (5/3/2002)
  Saudi Arabia, the US embark on a joint strategy for peace   (5/2/2002)
  Saudi crown prince gets a telephone call from Bush   (4/30/2002)
  US explains reasons behind military equipement pull ou from Saudi Arabia   (4/6/2002)

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