"If their economy is finished, they will become too busy to enslave oppressed people," he said.
It is thus "very important to concentrate on hitting the US economy with every available means."
As in his other post-Sept. 11 addresses, Bin Laden did not actually say "I did it." But the message was clearly: "I would do it if I could."
Al-Jazeera said bin Laden's latest dose of anti-Western rhetoric -- a rambling sermon in which he shifted between animal fables, military advice, verses from the Koran and his own poetry -- had been mailed from Pakistan.
It did not say how it got the tape or when or where it had been shot. The channel's anchor said it could have been recorded during the Muslim holy month of Ramadan as bin Laden was swallowing constantly. Muslims refrain from eating and drinking from dawn to dusk during Ramadan, which ended on Dec. 15.
Experts said the tape was intended to show the world that he was still alive, at least until the middle of December because he spoke of a US raid that took place at that time.
In Washington, Saudi ambassador Prince Bandar bin Sultan condemned the bin Laden tape as "the usual rhetoric we have seen before from a deviant and cowardly criminal.
"Bin Laden is deluding himself if he believes that his criminal acts are justified by any religion or principle of humanity".
"Bin Laden and those associated with him are criminals who must be brought to justice and severely punished," he added.
Meanwhile, the Afghan Defense Ministry's claim that bin Laden had slipped into Pakistan and was being protected by followers of Islamic radical leader, Maulana Fazalur Rehman, who had helped create the Taliban, has been denied by Rehman.
"This is a political gimmick," he told Reuters from his home in northwest Pakistan where he is under house arrest.
But in a telling comment on how elusive bin Laden has proved, a senior defense official revealed that since the US started its attacks on Afghanistan in October, its forces had never come close enough to finding the Saudi-born radical to attack his location.
The US never had "actionable intelligence," or information that could be acted on immediately, on bin Laden's whereabouts since launching its military campaign in Afghanistan on Oct. 7, the senior defense official said.
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