LONDON, 2 August 2004 — Saudi Ambassador to Britain Prince Turki Al-Faisal said yesterday Michael Moore got the facts wrong in his controversial film “Fahrenheit 9/11” and did not travel to Saudi Arabia to research his documentary.

Prince Turki said in an interview with London’s Sunday Telegraph that the documentary was “grossly unfair” to Saudi Arabia. He said Moore was given a visa to travel to Saudi Arabia but never came.

“He missed an important opportunity to find out key facts,” he said.

Meanwhile, Kuwait said it has banned “Fahrenheit 9/11” because it deemed the movie insulting to Saudi Arabia and critical of America’s invasion of Iraq.

“We have a law that prohibits insulting friendly nations, and ties between Kuwait and Saudi Arabia are special,” Abdul Aziz Bou Dastour, cinema and production supervisor at the Information Ministry, told the Associated Press.

He said the film “insulted the Saudi royal family by saying they had common interests with the Bush family and that those interests contradicted with the interests of the American people.”

Moore’s film has earned more than $100 million in the US and become the most successful documentary ever. The film won the top honor at May’s Cannes Film Festival. It depicts the White House as asleep at the wheel before the Sept. 11 attacks in New York and Washington. Moore accuses US President Bush of fanning fears of future terrorism to win public support for the Iraq war.

The Saudi government has taken issue with the movie for claiming that high-ranking Saudi nationals were allowed to flee the United States immediately after the attacks at a time when American airspace had been closed to all commercial traffic.

But the ambassador said the claim had been refuted in a report compiled by the 9/11 Commission investigating the attacks. The commission found no evidence that any flights of Saudi nationals took place before the reopening of national airspace on Sept. 13. “It would have been far better if Michael Moore had been able to read the 9/11 report before he made his film. It shows that all the protocols were observed,” Prince Turki told the Telegraph.

On Iraq, the Kuwaiti official said the film “criticized America’s policy on invading Iraq and this was tantamount to criticizing Kuwait for (what it did) to liberate Iraq.”

Last month, the Kuwait National Cinema Co. asked for licensing the movie to be shown in Kuwait, but the ministry denied its request.