Saudi Interior Minister Prince Nayef left for Iran today on an official visit to sign a bilateral security pact.
Prince Nayef said on the eve of his visit that there would be no extradition clause in the pact, denying it had been excluded to avoid raising the sensitive issue of suspects in a 1996 bombing which killed 19 U.S. troops in Saudi Arabia.
Asked by Saudi's Arabic-language Okazdaily if the exclusion was related to the possible presence of the suspects in Iran, he said: This is not true, this has never been discussed.
The pact is a fresh sign of warming relations between the two countries after years of mutual suspicion following the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran.
Saudi Arabia says the bilateral pact aims to fight crime, terrorism and drug trafficking and should not be seen as a regional defence pact.
Prince Nayef has repeatedly refused to blame any party for the bombing which targeted the military complex housing U.S. troops in the eastern province of Saudi Arabia, saying the kingdom needed to complete its investigation first.
A CBS Newsreport in February cited unnamed sources as saying that U.S. federal investigators had identified Ahmad Sherif, a senior member of the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, as the man responsible for planning and carying out the bombing.
The United States has maintained a military presence in Saudi Arabia since the build-up to the 1991 Gulf War.