Qatar Station Airs Interview With Saudi Exile Bin Laden

Millions of Arabs were able to watch Osama bin Laden for the first time Thursday as he called for a holy war against his No. 1 enemy--the United States.

In a 90-minute program aired by the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite channel, Bin Laden expressed his admiration for the people who bombed U.S. forces in Saudi Arabia in 1995 and 1996 and said that all Americans are targets.

“They violate our land and occupy it and steal the Muslims’ possessions, and when faced by resistance they call it terrorism,” Bin Laden said in an interview on the Arab world’s most popular television channel, watched by millions in the Middle East, North Africa and Europe.

It was uncertain when or where the interview took place. Sources at Al Jazeera said it was several months old. At the time, Bin Laden was living in a hide-out in Afghanistan. It was not clear why the interview was not aired earlier.

The government-owned Al Jazeera, accessible to satellite subscribers, regularly discusses issues usually not covered by Arab media. Satellite ownership is extremely common in Arab Gulf states, and access to the channel throughout the rest of the Arab world puts the channel’s viewership in the millions.

Sources at the station said some Gulf states had put pressure on Al Jazeera not to air Thursday’s Bin Laden program. Station manager Mohammed Jasim Ali would not comment on the reports.

“People all over the Gulf and the Middle East were glued to their seats tonight,” said Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Arabic newspaper Al Quds al Arabi.

“They have never seen Bin Laden speak in Arabic before. This is the first time an Arabic station has given him a platform,” said Atwan, who was one of the commentators on the program.

Washington accuses Bin Laden, a Saudi millionaire stripped of his citizenship by Riyadh, of masterminding the deadly Aug. 7, 1998, bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people and injured thousands.

Bin Laden, wearing a camouflage jacket and white turban and sporting a long, graying beard, denied that he was behind the embassy bombings but said he admired the people who carried out those attacks and two deadly bombings in Saudi Arabia that killed 24 Americans in 1995 and 1996.