Blair Warns Arabs on Life Under Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, America’s most wanted man, is as much a threat to the Middle East as he is to the West, British Prime Minister Tony Blair told a Mideast audience in an interview broadcast Tuesday.

Blair appeared on Qatar’s Al Jazeera satellite television network in what his spokesman in London described as a reply to comments made by Bin Laden and his aides on the same station Sunday.

Shortly after the first U.S.-British attacks in Afghanistan, Bin Laden vowed in an apparently pre-taped message that America will “not live in peace” and praised God for the Sept. 11 attacks.

“Let us be clear, when we listen to the words of Osama bin Laden, if he has his way, the regimes that he would replace regimes in the Arab world with would be like the Taliban regime in Afghanistan,” Blair said.

“I don’t believe that anybody seriously wants to live under that kind of regime,” Blair said.

The interview in London was broadcast with a voice-over in Arabic.

Across the Islamic world, many ordinary people criticized the U.S.-led attacks in Afghanistan, while most governments gave limited public endorsements, apparently fearing a resurgence of the kind of Islamic fundamentalism they have fought and crushed.

“This is not about the West versus Islam,” Blair said. “Decent Muslims, millions of them in European countries, have condemned these acts of terrorism in New York and elsewhere in America with every bit as much force as any of the rest of us.”

He said Afghanistan’s Taliban rulers, who are harboring Bin Laden and members of his Al Qaeda terrorist network, had been given the choice of siding with justice or siding with terror. “They chose to side with terror.”

Blair wants to “indicate very clearly to the Middle East and the region that this isn’t a war against Islam,” a Blair spokesman said on condition of anonymity.

On Sunday, Al Qaeda spokesman Sulaiman abu Ghaith declared on the tape aired on Al Jazeera: “The war against Afghanistan and Osama bin Laden is a war on Islam.”

Al Jazeera’s frequent showing of Bin Laden footage prompted the United States last week to raise concerns about the station’s coverage during a meeting with the emir of Qatar in Washington.

The station has defended its policy, saying Bin Laden is a party to the conflict.