DUBAI (REUTERS) — A man identified as Saudi-born extremist Osama bin Laden warned U.S. allies in an audio tape aired Tuesday against backing the “White House gang of butchers” against Iraq and Muslims.
In the tape broadcast by Arabic-language television station al-Jazeera, the speaker hailed the Oct. 12 Bali bomb blasts, the killing of a marine in Kuwait, the bombing of a French oil tanker off Yemen and last month’s Chechen hostage-taking in Moscow.
He said the attacks were retaliatory strikes against U.S. allies by “pious Muslims defending their religion and heeding God’s orders.”
If authenticated, the tape would be the clearest evidence yet that bin Laden survived the U.S.-led military campaign in Afghanistan that toppled his Taliban hosts and sought to flush out al Qaeda, which Washington blames for last year’s Sept. 11 attacks.
In Washington, U.S. officials said the voice on the tape would be analyzed to determine if it was indeed that of the al Qaeda leader.
“We’ve seen these reports, and we will analyze the recording. We don’t know if it’s him or not,” said Sean McCormack, spokesman for the White House National Security Council.
Jazeera, which did not say how it obtained the tape, has often carried statements by bin Laden and his aides. The most recent event mentioned in the tape took place on Oct. 28.
The speaker blasted President Bush as the “Pharaoh of the time” for “killing Iraqis” while supporting Israel against the Palestinians.
He warned U.S. allies they would be targets of new attacks if they continued to support the Bush administration.
“Do your governments not know the White House gang are the biggest butchers of the era? … Why should your governments ally themselves with America,” said the man, whose voice resembled that of bin Laden.
He accused the United States and its allies of harming Muslims in the Palestinian territories and other areas and warned: “As you kill you will be killed.”
Message to U.S. allies
The speaker said his message was particularly addressed to the people of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Australia.
“The road to safety (for the West) starts with stopping aggression,” he said.
“We had warned Australia about its participation in Afghanistan (war) … It ignored the warning until it woke up to the sound of explosions in Bali.”
He stopped short of claiming responsibility for the Bali nightclub bombings, which killed more than 180 people, many of them Australians.
He also referred to the murder of a senior administrator of the U.S. Agency for International Development, who was gunned down in Jordan Oct. 28.
A U.S. marine was killed earlier in October in an attack on U.S. forces conducting a military exercise in Kuwait, and on Oct. 6 the French-flagged supertanker Limburg was attacked off Yemen. A blast blew a hole in its hull, and the vessel was gutted by fire.
The tape also referred to the three-day Moscow theater siege that ended with the deaths of 128 hostages and 41 Chechen rebels when Russian forces stormed the building.
Jazeera last month broadcast what it said was the voice of bin Laden threatening more attacks on the United States. But the tape did not refer to any particular events to help establish when it was made.
