Secretary of State Colin Powell described ties with Saudi Arabia as strong, but said Washington expected the oil-rich kingdom to do more to support the war against terrorism, a newspaper reported on Friday. The decades-long relationship between Washington and Riyadh has been severely tested by the September 11 attacks on the United States and the prospect of a U.S. attack to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein.

"Cooperation with Saudi Arabia is very good. ... The Saudis are helping us in the campaign against terrorism and helped us with intelligence exchanges," Powell said in remarks published in the London-based Ashraq al-Awsat Arabic-language newspaper.

"There are more things that Saudi Arabia can do and we always explore cooperation aspects with the Saudi leadership," he said without elaborating.

Washington blames the September 11 attacks on Saudi-born militant Osama bin Laden and his al Qaeda network. Fifteen of the 19 hijackers accused of ramming aircraft into New York and Washington were Saudi nationals.

Saudi Arabia has been angered by a stream criticism in the United States, including a comment by one analyst who told a Pentagon panel that Saudi Arabia should be considered an adversary. But Powell played down the anti-Saudi comments.

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"There have been a lot of comments about Saudi Arabia and our ties with it, but I can say without reservation that our ties with Saudi Arabia are good and strong," Powell said.

The criticism has prompted rare calls from within the Gulf kingdom to review relations with Washington that have kept reasonably priced oil flowing to the United States.

On Monday, the Saudi cabinet accused some Western media of conducting a smear campaign, including allegations that royal family members had funded terrorism.

But Powell echoed the conciliatory note struck by President Bush when he met a Saudi envoy earlier this week.

"We know that the Saudis are as angry as Americans are because a number of those terrorists came from Saudi Arabia," Powell said. "We always have to remind people that Saudi Arabia had withdrawn the citizenship of bin Laden."

Saudi Arabia stripped bin Laden of his citizenship in the mid-1990s, allegedly for activities against the royal family.

Powell did not make reference to Saudi opposition to a possible U.S. attack on Iraq, which Washington says is developing weapons of mass destruction.

Saudi Arabia, which played a pivotal role in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq, has said it will not allow U.S. forces to use its soil to launch an attack on Baghdad.

A trillion-dollar civil lawsuit by relatives of September 11 victims against Saudi royal family members, financial institutions and charities has also raised questions in the kingdom about the strength of ties with the United States.

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US Secretary of State Colin Powell dismissed as baseless talk of a rift in Saudi-US relations, stressing that ties were "strong and excel