[dmm]

Here's the beginning of the article to which I was referring:

From the NYTimes, 25 September 2001

Saudi Arabia Cuts Ties With Taliban
By JOHN F. BURNS with CHRISTOPHER S. WREN

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan, Sept. 25 — Saudi Arabia announced today that it had broken relations with Afghanistan because of the ruling Taliban's insistence on supporting "criminals and terrorists."

An official statement issued through the Saudi Press Agency said the kingdom of Saudi Arabia was severing diplomatic ties because "the Taliban have ignored all of the contacts and the attempts by the kingdom to persuade them to stop harboring criminals and terrorists and training them and inciting them and making its land a refuge and haven for them."

The Afghan people's fight for independence — an allusion to their violent resistance to Soviet occupation — had earned their country "a special status" in the hearts of those who championed the right of nations to be free and independent, the Saudi announcement said.

It charged that "the Taliban have used that special status for Afghanistan not for building the ties of brotherhood and for building and development and enforcing the lofty aims which Islam represents, but have made its land a center for attracting, training and recruiting a number of gullible men from different lands, especially citizens of the kingdom, in order to carry out criminal acts that violate all faiths and creeds."

The Taliban, it added, was "continuing to reject handing over those criminals to justice." Such behavior by the Taliban, it said, was "defaming Islam and defaming Muslims' reputation in the world."

The statement did not specifically mention Osama bin Laden, the Saudi-born terrorist leader wanted in the Sept. 11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Mr. bin Laden has lived in Afghanistan since 1996 under the protection of the Taliban, which refused to hand him over and now claims not to know where he is.

"In spite of what happened and what is happening," the Saudi statement said, "the Taliban government is still continuing to use its land to harbor, arm and encourage those criminals in carrying out terrorist attacks that horrify those who live in peace and the innocent and spread terror and destruction in the world." An English translation of the announcement was carried by the Associated Press.

.... the article continues with other stuff ....