by Lydia Georgi

DUBAI, Sept 9, 2008 (AFP) - Oil-rich Saudi Arabia, home of most of the 9/11 hijackers, has largely neutralised local Al-Qaeda militants but they can not be written off so long as their "dogma" is alive, officials and experts say.

And a surge of Al-Qaeda militancy in neighbouring Yemen shows that the fight against the group is not over in the Arabian peninsula.

"Security forces have managed to bring the situation on the ground under control and have so far succeeded in foiling Al-Qaeda's plots in the kingdom," said Saudi interior ministry spokesman General Mansur al-Turki.

"But this does not mean that Al-Qaeda is finished. Al-Qaeda still seeks to propagate its thinking and recruit youths in and outside the kingdom," he told AFP, echoing the cautious view often voiced by officials.

"A greater degree of international cooperation is required to defeat Al-Qaeda everywhere," Turki added.

Saudi authorities periodically announce the arrest of scores of Saudi and foreign Al-Qaeda suspects and the thwarting of plots to attack targets, including oil facilities.

Riyadh has waged a relentless crackdown against Islamist extremists since they launched a wave of attacks in the Gulf country in May 2003 -- a jolt which many have called Saudi Arabia's "own September 11" in a reference to the 2001 attacks in the United States, in which 15 of 19 suicide hijackers were Saudis.

"It is true that in military terms Al-Qaeda has been mostly dismantled in Saudi Arabia, but we haven't yet destroyed its dogma," said Jamal Khashoggi, editor of the Saudi daily Al-Watan and an expert on the extremist group.

"It could hit back if we eased the pressure on it. Al-Qaeda is not a mass movement, but a movement of select groups ... and as long as Al-Qaeda is able to recruit five or 10 people, we are still in danger," he said.

Khashoggi said Saudi Arabia has made some progress in fighting Al-Qaeda's ideology through projects such as the "advice committee" of scholars who seek to wean youngsters from the group.

But "the ideological battle has not been won yet," as evidenced by the recurrent arrests of suspects, he said.

Sheikh Mohsen al-Awaji, a prominent Saudi Muslim cleric, said the threat from Al-Qaeda in Saudi Arabia has been "reduced to its lowest level" thanks to a three-pronged offensive.

First, security forces "struck with an iron fist at anyone who carried out subversive acts," which led to the elimination of the group's leaders, he told AFP.

Secondly, thinkers and scholars were enlisted to promote "sound alternative thinking" and they managed to "besiege the sources which feed Al-Qaeda's ideology."

Thirdly, "the sources of financing which used to reach Al-Qaeda -- either inadvertently from well-intentioned philanthropists or from people sharing the group's views -- were dried up," according to Awaji, a moderate Islamist.

"True, it is the government that has led this effort. But it has done so with the assistance and support of everyone, even those who call for political reforms," he said, alluding to opposition activists.

"This is a national security issue."

While Saudi Arabia seems to have put behind it the dark days when Western residents fled the country after a spate of attacks by the so-called "Al-Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula," including the gruesome beheading of a US engineer in June 2004, its southern neighbour Yemen has in the past year faced an upsurge in Al-Qaeda operations against both Western and local targets.

Authorities in Yemen, ancestral homeland of Saudi-born Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, have reported the arrest or killing of many Al-Qaeda suspects in past months, including some who they said were plotting attacks in Saudi Arabia.

Both Sanaa and Riyadh have publicised their cooperation in fighting the militants.

"Al-Qaeda looks for security gaps here or there," such as in Somalia, Khashoggi said.

"The problem with Yemen is that the government does not have full control over its territory," and there are de facto "autonomous areas," a situation which Al-Qaeda takes advantage of.

"We shouldn't see it as a case of Al-Qaeda regrouping as an army in Yemen ... We're talking about dozens (of militants). But they are still dangerous," not least because of their use of suicide attacks, he said.

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