A purported audio tape by Osama bin Laden, aired on Arab television yesterday, offered a truce to Europeans if they pulled troops out of Muslim nations but vowed to continue fighting the US and Israel.
The voice on the tape, which sounded like that on previous broadcasts believed to be genuine, also said that the March 11 train bombings in Madrid that killed 191 people were retaliation for Spain's role in Iraq, Afghanistan and with the Palestinians.
"I offer a truce to them [Europe] with a commitment to stop operations against any state which vows to stop attacking Muslims or interfere in their affairs," the voice said.
"The announcement of the truce starts with the withdrawal of the last soldier from our land and the door is open for three months from the date of the announcement of this statement," the tape said.
"Whoever rejects this truce and wants war, we are its [war's] sons and whoever wants this truce, here we bring it," it said.
The address to Europe looked like an attempt to exploit trans-Atlantic differences over the war in Iraq and the Middle East peace process and disquiet among European voters and some governments about US foreign policy.
It was not immediately possible to verify the authenticity of the tape broadcast by the Dubai-based Al Arabiya channel and Qatar-based Al Jazeera. The CIA has said some previous tapes allegedly by bin Laden could be genuine.
The fugitive Saudi-born al Qaeda leader is believed to be in hiding somewhere in Afghanistan or on the Pakistan frontier.
"President [George W.] Bush and leaders in his sphere, big media institutions and the United Nations ... all of them are a fatal danger to the world, and the Zionist lobby is their most dangerous and difficult member, and we insist, God willing, on continuing to fight them," the man on the tape said.
He vowed revenge on Israel and the US for the death of Hamas leader Ahmed Yassin, killed last month in Gaza.
Speaking of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks on the US and this year's March 11 bombings in Spain, he said:
"Our actions come in response to your actions of destroying and killing our people in Afghanistan, Iraq and Palestine. It is enough to witness the event that shocked the world, the killing of the elderly, wheelchair-bound Sheikh Ahmed Yassin, God have mercy on him, and we pledge to God to take revenge on America, God willing."
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