ROBERT FISK, THE INDEPENDENT NEWSPAPER: Well, no nation, as a nation - that`s for sure. The Iranians don`t want to be any part of this. Surely the Iraqis don`t, and indeed, no Arab nation really wants to be part of this. You have to realise that the Arabs are far more disturbed that the war - the bombing of Afghanistan - may switch to an Arab nation like, for example, Syria, or perhaps Lebanon, if the American President could be convinced that the Hezbollah are also, quote, "on his terrorist list", unquote. So, for example, most of the Arab leaders, who are meeting at the moment in the Gulf, are far keener to make sure the bombing is restricted to Afghanistan than they are for the bombing to stop. Although they will say, of course, that they don`t want any civilians injured. But the truth of the matter is that if there is anyone who is going to be following what bin Laden says, they`ve been in place perhaps in Arab countries, perhaps in the West, for a long, long time. If anything, this is a kind of coded message, though I don`t want to sound too melodramatic about it, to his people that the gloves are now off, that Bush has declared war on bin Laden and that bin Laden has declared war on Bush. And if indeed bin Laden is responsible for the atrocities in New York and Washington, well, he did that anyway on September 11.

JANA WENDT: Do any of those countries meeting or about to be meeting in the Gulf care about what happens to the Taliban?

ROBERT FISK: Well, the Saudis do because they helped to invent the Taliban and fund them, and one of the key figures in doing this was Prince Turki bin Faisal al-Saud, the then head of Saudi intelligence who was fired two months ago. You`ve got to realise that bin Laden himself is a Saudi. It appeared or was until he was deprived of his citizenship in 1994, and it appears that more than half the actual hijackers perpetrating those crimes against humanity on September 11 were Saudis as well. And it`s the Saudi religious police, for example, that gave birth, if you like, to this preposterous Taliban religious police called the Organisation for the Prevention of Vice and Promotion of Virtue. So although they don`t like the Taliban anymore, they see it as a monster they created which has gone out of control. The Saudis are quite worried about what`s happening in Afghanistan. But most Arab nations, frankly, are not. They regard the Taliban as being an obscurantist Wahabi Sunni Muslim sect, and countries like Syria, for example, which indeed crushed an Islamic uprising with up to 20,000 dead in 1982 are not going to be shedding any tears about this bunch of people.

JANA WENDT: Just returning to the Saudis - the Saudi Prince Banda is reported today as saying that in Western democracies, if you lose touch with your people, you lose elections. In a monarchy, you lose your head. How close do you believe the Saudi monarchy is, in fact, to losing its head?

ROBERT FISK: Well, Prince Banda, who is the Saudi Ambassador to Washington says things like this in order to suggest to Americans they must be careful because of the frailty of America`s allies - the Saudi royal family. The real problem in Saudi Arabia is not the people. The problem in Saudi Arabia is that quite a number of the Saudi princes, members of the Saudi royal family, have some liking for bin Laden. The danger for the Saudi royal family is there`ll be a revolution from within the family. The danger elsewhere in the Arab world, that Arabs in general will be so outraged against the Anglo-American bombing - or let`s be realistic, the American bombing with a few British missiles - that they will start saying, "Why are we tolerating any longer these pro-Western Arab dictatorships which suppress us with torture and hold fake elections and go on allowing the Americans to bomb a Muslim nation?" And of course, the idea of the overthrow of these pro-Western regimes in the Arab world is one of the principal demands of bin Laden himself.

JANA WENDT: OK, let`s move on and have a look at Egypt. Osama bin Laden`s top two lieutenants, it appears, come from the Egyptian Islamic Jihad. What do you think the fallout is going to be in Egypt of this action?

ROBERT FISK: Egyptians generally, you know, they go into the streets and riot and attack the security forces over lack of food or taxes, but they don`t generally get involved in issues outside Egypt. The great danger in Egypt, however, is that there`s now a new current of young, well-educated people who don`t have jobs in Egypt - people with PhDs in both sciences and arts from the major Cairo universities, who have no work. And what they do is they begin to look at their own society and say, "What`s wrong with it?" These people listen to a very eloquent voice, by the way - which bin Laden is in Arabic on his video cassettes and his broadcasts. And these are the people whom Mubarak will have to watch because these people say, "We have no democracy, our elections are a fraud, we do what the West wants, and we sit back supinely while the West bombs another Muslim nation." That`s the danger to Mubarak. Possibly more of assassination attempts, and he`s allegedly had about 33 now - all, fortunately for him, unsuccessful. But on top of that, there is a great danger that student power in the universities will spill into the streets. We`re already getting, for example, in Ain Shams University, prayers for the dead in Afghanistan being said. Zigazgat, north of Cairo, We had students saying, "Our rulers, why are you so silent? Are you being told what to say by the Americans?" And that`s quite a dangerous rhetorical shout to make, because it has a burden of truth in it.

JANA WENDT: So do you believe in essence that Osama bin Laden is astutely exploiting the existing fault lines inside these Arab Muslim governments?

ROBERT FISK: Well, he`s been doing that for quite a number of years. I think what we should realise, perhaps, and this is not meant to be on bin Laden`s side, by the way, is that we in the West have responded to these crimes against humanity over the period of a month with a good deal of thought about what we`re going to do. I wonder if we`ve given it enough thought. But I think we`ve also got to realise that bin Laden is an intelligent as well as a ruthless man, and he will have undoubtedly pre-planned forward what the West`s response would be to these terrible crimes in America. And I suspect that he knew the Americans, and perhaps the British, would bomb Afghanistan, and then perhaps try to come in on the ground, and will have calculated the effect in the Arab world. I don`t think that we should assume that he`s hiding in a cave and going to be smoked out, as Mr Bush fondly believes. Maybe he`s waiting for us just as we think we`re waiting to go after him.

JANA WENDT: And Robert Fisk, very quickly because we are running out of time, do you believe that this videotaped statement, the latest one by Osama bin Laden, is in fact an admission of guilt on his part in relation to the US attacks?

ROBERT FISK: Well, it certainly makes him look pretty culpable, although as usual, and he`s said this to me in public conversations with my newspaper, whenever I`ve asked him about bombings, he`ll say he approves of it, it`s a good thing, but he`s not responsible. But I think that`s a bit of a get-out clause - I certainly, when I saw that videotape, thought "Whoops, I think you probably are responsible." Robert Fisk, we must leave it there. I appreciate your time tonight.