World Notes SAUDI ARABIA

Iran has often charged Saudi Arabia with failing to protect the sacred sites of Islam. But when Iranian visitors staged riots during the annual pilgrimage to the holy city of Mecca in 1987, Saudi security forces did not hesitate before attempting to quell the disturbances. More than 400 people, most of them Iranians, died during the violent clashes, leading to a break in diplomatic relations between the two countries the following year. Last week the Saudis demonstrated their resolve to punish disrupters of the hajj. In the largest public execution in recent years, swordsmen in Mecca publicly beheaded 16 Kuwaiti citizens for detonating bombs in Mecca last July.

The bombings, which killed one Pakistani pilgrim, may also have had an Iranian connection. Saudi television broadcast what it said was the confession of the ringleader, Mansour Hassan Abdullah Mehmeid, 32. He and some of his accomplices had received Iranian training, said Mehmeid, and "collected the explosives from the back door of the Iranian embassy in Kuwait."