Saudi Alert As King Fahd Rushed to Hospital

Saudi Arabia declared a state of alert and cancelled all military leave last night as speculation swept the capital that King Fahd had died.

The official news agency had earlier issued a statement saying the king, who is in his 80s and suffers from poor health, had been admitted to King Faisal specialist hospital in Riyadh with a fever and water in his lungs.

"We ask God ... to preserve and protect" the king, the statement said.

"King Fahd was running a high temperature for three days and this caused concern and required scans, tests and some treatment," a Saudi official told Reuters.

An official who spoke anonymously to the Associated Press said the king was believed to have pneumonia.

A hospital official later said he was undergoing medical tests, but added that he was doing well. The king was incapacitated by a stroke in 1995 and his half-brother, Crown Prince Abdullah, is in day-to-day charge of the kingdom.

The Crown Prince has long been expected to succeed him, though there has also been talk of opposition from the "Sudari seven", the seven sons of the wife of King Abdul Aziz, founder of the modern Saudi Arabia.

Under Saudi Arabia's constitution, each of the 44 sons of Abdul Aziz had a claim to the throne before it could pass to the next generation.

Many have since died and not all are considered suitable heirs.

Prince Sultan, the influential defence minister, is widely expected to follow Prince Abdullah. The next brothers in line are the reactionary interior minister, Prince Nayef, and the powerful Riyadh governor, Prince Salman.

All are elderly, and there have been fears that a rapid succession of elderly kings would slow reforms. Eventually the throne will pass to the next generation.

But with hundreds of grandsons of Abdul Aziz and no clear succession order, there are concerns about a struggle for the throne.

Official statements about the king's health normally seek to reassure the public, so yesterday's announcement, together with the declaration of an alert, was seen as possibly preparing the way for an announcement of his death.

"There are strong rumours that he is already dead," said Ahmed al-Ali of the Saudi Institute, a Washington-based dissident organisation. "This is information coming from senior people, but there is nothing certain."

High levels of official secrecy in the kingdom have given rise to speculative reports of the King Fahd's death before.

The most recent came last month when a report attributed to sources close to the royal family said the king had disappeared from the public scene for 10 days and noted "frantic activity" among his closest relatives.

Last Wednesday, the king was reported to have undergone a medical examination after feeling "tired".

"He did not go to hospital. He had a medical examination. Nothing has changed," a Saudi source told Reuters after rumours that he had been taken ill or died contributed to a sudden drop in the kingdom's stock market.

King Fahd rose to the throne in 1982, and has brought his country closer to the United States. His decision to allow US troops to use Saudi bases after the 1990 Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was blamed for stoking Islamic extremist anger in the kingdom.

But he has also tried to appease hardliners, adopting a tough line on the Israel-Palestinian question and naming himself the custodian of Islam's two holiest sites in Mecca and Medina.