RIYADH, Saudi Arabia – British security chiefs are studying a novel Saudi approach to combating terror – using clerics to debate “jihad” with jailed militants and convert them to more moderate beliefs.

The Saudi authorities said they had re-educated about 400 out of 700 extremists and released them from prison.

The Islamic “counseling” program is part of what British experts regard as Saudi Arabia’s “model counter-terrorism campaign.”

Senior officials, including Dame Eliza Manningham-Buller, the MI5 chief, have visited the kingdom to devise a similar “counter-radicalization” strategy for Britain.

Saudi Arabia is one of the few countries where the fight against terrorism has yielded real success with a softer approach.

Al Qaeda’s campaign in Saudi Arabia, Osama bin Laden’s birthplace, started spectacularly with suicide bombings against western compounds in Riyadh three years ago but has now abated.

Saudi security forces say they have killed or captured 25 out of 26 people on their original 2003 list of “most wanted” terrorists, including local leaders of Al Qaeda.

Only four people on a follow-up list of 36 militants are believed to be still at large in the kingdom. The rest have been killed, captured or fled, mostly to Iraq.

“Every day their numbers, capability and resources are less and less,” the spokesman for the Saudi ministry of interior, General Mansour al-Turki, said. “Terrorism in Saudi Arabia has been degraded.

“We are helped by the fact that our response to attacks is fast. Every cell that carries out an attack does not get to plan another.”

The government has sacked about 1,000 hardline clerics, prevented Saudis from going to fight in Iraq and invested heavily in technology, such as a new control room for security forces in Riyadh.

Now more than 100 Muslim clerics, psychiatrists and psychologists are involved in counseling inmates around the country.

This is offered only to militants who have not been directly involved in terrorist acts but are believed to sympathize with or provide support to extremists.

After a psychological assessment, they have one-on-one sessions with clerics to debate radical ideology, including the meaning of “jihad” or holy war and the doctrine of “takfir,” declaring Muslims who disagree with them to be infidels.

Prisoners in the program are given more access to their family, who sometimes have transport and accommodation paid for by the government. If deemed suitable for release, they are then offered more help, for instance, in finding work.

“These people are very isolated in their cells. They are encouraged not to deal with anybody outside the cells. That is how their minds are controlled,” General al-Turki said.

“When they are arrested, we give them a chance to think for themselves, and most of them realize they chose the wrong path.”

Nawaf Obaid, a Saudi security adviser, said: “None of those who have been released are known to have gone back to terrorism.

“These young men are up against people who have years of experience in religious theology. They sit with the Koran and go through each of the verses. I have met two or three of them and doubt they will go back to terrorism.”

These “soft” tactics have impressed British experts. “The Saudis are doing a great deal to deal with terrorism and the cause of terrorism,” Britain’s foreign secretary, Jack Straw, said during a visit to Riyadh last week.