His comments were seen as a veiled admission that the Saudi government faces problems in dealing with growing support for the Saudi-born dissident, Osama Ben Laden.

Speaking in a televised speech on Thursday, Prince Nayef laid down the law, telling security officers not to sympathise with dissenters.

"Unfortunately, we find in our homeland those who sympathise with people who try to damage our security in the name of Islam", he said, admitting tacitly that increasing number of Saudis sympathise with Bin Laden - the prime suspect in 11 September terrorist attacks in the United States - and the Taleban in Afghanistan who back him.

Analysts say the campaign against terrorism led by Saudi Arabia's ally the United States is causing difficulties for the Saudi royal family.

"If you had been in Iran during the Islamic revolution, you could feel the same odour here", the source said, asking for anonymity.

"It leaves [the royal family] with a crisis that is likely to get worse with time because, basically, they have Muslim responsibilities that they have to meet", Palestinian author Sa’id Abu Rich, who has written extensively about Saudi Arabia, has told the BBC’s World Service.

He said the campaign was putting the royal family in an impossible position.

"They are the guardians of Islam's holy shrines, and there is simultaneously, for instance, the United States, so it is becoming very difficult to reconcile the two", he pointed out".

"It is not easy to run a place that is part global filling station, part Islamic Vatican", observed Britain’s influential weekly "The Economist", adding that "ever since the Gulf war, the Saudi royal family, under pressure from religious arch-conservatives at home, has increasingly felt the need to buy Islamist approval by funding, and encouraging the private financing of Islamic causes, and by exporting religious zeal. Saudi money has sponsored the building of more that 1.600 mosques across the world in the past decade, as well as dozens of Islamic colleges and schools".

The Saudi government has been alarmed by recent anti-western speeches made by radical Saudi cleric Sheikh Hamoud Ibn Oqala al-Shuaibi.

He has told Muslims not to help "infidels" against Afghanistan's Taleban rulers.

The challenge for the country's rulers is to contain it without appearing to side too openly with the United States and its allies.

Saudi Arabia, reluctant to join the US-led anti-terrorist war on Afghanistan, is facing a religious backlash in support of the Taleban and in defiance of the Muslim establishment.

Sheikh Shuaibi was personally singled out Saturday for praise by Al-Qa’eda, Mr. Ben Laden’s main organisation based in Afghanistan.

The firebrand's fatwas have justified the September 11 attacks and asked Muslims to defend their "Taleban brothers", who rule 90 per cent of the war-torn Afghanistan and now face US-led retaliatory strikes after refusing to hand over the Saudi-born dissident Ben Laden.

"It is rather unfortunate that some of our clerics have resorted to pity and sympathy (toward the United States). They forgot the killings and destruction carried out without pity by this infidel state in many Islamic countries" further observed.

Shuaibi appeared to target Grand Mufti Sheikh Abdulaziz ibn Abdullah al-Sheikh, the highest religious authority in Saudi Arabia who had condemned the terrorist operations in New York and Washington as contrary to Islamic law but stopped short of denouncing the strikes on Afghanistan.

Sheikh Saleh al-Lahidan, president of the kingdom's Higher Judicial Council, also denounced the terror attacks as a "terrible crime."

He also denounced "certain infidel Muslim governments" for allowing Washington and its allies to use their soil, airspace, seas and military bases as launching pads to strike Afghanistan, another Sunni-controlled country.

Saudi Arabia, one of only three states to recognize the Taleban rule over Afghanistan, cut ties with the movement in the aftermath of the September 11 suicide hijackings.