Mon, Oct 20, 2003 - Page 6 News List

Al-Jazeera broadcasts bin Laden tape

HOLY WAR In a tape broadcast on al-Jazeera, a speaker claiming to be Osama bin Laden threatened attacks on US allies and urged followers to wage war on Americans

AP , CAIRO

Addressing US troops in Iraq, the speaker said: "Your blood will be spilled so the White House gang gets richer and the arms dealers with them, as well as the large companies involved."

US officials have noted that some tape releases have been preludes to attacks. In an April 7 tape, a speaker believed to be bin Laden exhorted Muslims to rise up against Saudi Arabia and calls for suicide attacks against US and British interests. Suicide bombers struck Western housing compounds in the Saudi capital on May 12, killing 26 people.

There was no major attack, however, following the Sept. 10 message from bin Laden. In that message, al-Jazeera broadcast a videotape that contained a pair of voiceovers, one purportedly from bin Laden and the other from his deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.

The CIA said two days later that analysts believed bin Laden's voice on the tape was probably authentic.

The message aired Saturday also derided Washington's attempts to persuade other nations to send troops to Iraq.

"America is bogged down in the quagmire of the Tigris and the Euphrates [rivers]," the speaker on the tape said. The US "is in real trouble, God willing, and is today screaming at the top of its lungs."

Bush "thought that Iraq and its oil is an easy treasure," the voice said, adding that it has now "resorted to buying mercenary fighters from East and West," calling its war in Iraq a "new crusade on the Muslim world ... a decisive war for the whole nation."

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