Tape Urges All Muslims to Defend Iraq

A man believed to be Osama bin Laden, speaking on an audiotape released Tuesday, urged Muslims to help defend Iraq in the event of war and called for new suicide attacks against the United States and its allies.

In a 16-minute tape broadcast on the Qatar-based Al Jazeera satellite television network, Iraqis are exhorted to dig trenches to survive bombings and to fight “in cities and streets” to inflict the most casualties on U.S. troops. Muslims worldwide are called on to overthrow governments that provide military bases or other assistance to Washington.

The taped warning to America’s allies was released as Russia said Tuesday that it might use its veto in the U.N. Security Council to block a U.S. war in Iraq. As transatlantic tensions over how to disarm Iraq persisted, Russian President Vladimir V. Putin said in Paris that Russia and France, both permanent members of the Security Council, might team up to reject a U.S. military operation.

Bush administration officials said the audiotape was further evidence of their contention that Bin Laden has aligned Al Qaeda with Iraqi President Saddam Hussein’s dictatorial regime.

“An individual likely to be Bin Laden is saying that he supports the Iraqis and that he is calling upon all the faithful to rise up and to hammer the Americans and their allies,” a senior U.S. counter-terrorism official said. “That kind of puts into place the question of the relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda.”

Several outside experts disagreed, however, noting that the speaker voiced solidarity for the Iraqi people -- as Bin Laden has done in the past -- but not for Hussein’s secular ruling clique. At one point in the tape, Iraq is described as an “infidel regime.”

“I don’t see this as expressing support for the regime,” said Brian Jenkins, terrorism expert at the Rand Corp. think tank. “I see this as an astute exploitation of current emotions” to rally Bin Laden’s followers, to garner fresh recruits and to remind Muslims that he still commands attention.

Intelligence officials warned that Bin Laden might have been using the tape to deliver a coded message to his extremist followers.

No such hidden code has ever been identified, but terrorist attacks have followed several of his previous pronouncements.

President Bush last week ordered the nation on high alert for potential terror attacks. The apparent Bin Laden tape “heightens our security concerns further,” said a U.S. official who spoke on condition of anonymity.

George J. Tenet, the CIA director, told a Senate hearing Tuesday that the intelligence leading to last week’s alert “is the most specific we have seen” about the timing and likelihood of another terror attack.

Tenet said Al Qaeda is “refining new means of attack, including surface-to-air missiles, poisons, and air, surface and underwater methods to attack maritime targets.”

“The bottom line here,” Tenet said, “is that Al Qaeda is living in the expectation of resuming the offensive.”

An initial CIA analysis of the tape strongly suggested the voice was Bin Laden’s, officials said, but a complete analysis by the National Security Agency will take another day or so. An audiotape issued Nov. 12 was the first confirmation in more than a year that Bin Laden had survived the war in Afghanistan.

Counter-terrorism experts speculate that Bin Laden is recording his messages, and not issuing videotapes as he once often did, to hide possible clues to his location as well as to conceal his appearance -- and any health problems he may suffer.

The latest taped message dealt almost entirely with Iraq. The speaker said he was “following with utmost concern” the preparations “to occupy the former capital of Islam and to rob the wealth of Muslims and to appoint over you a [puppet] government that follows Washington and Tel Aviv, like all other treacherous and spy Arab governments.”

He advised Iraqis that the “most effective means” to survive bombing are “by digging large numbers of trenches and camouflaging them,” and he cited the survival of Al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan and said he was among them.

He described for the first time how he and 300 Al Qaeda fighters survived days of intense U.S. bombing at Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan in December 2001 by digging 100 trenches in a 1-square-mile area. Only 6% of his troops were killed, he said, and only 2% of those in the trenches were injured.

“Don’t worry about the American lies and their smart bombs and laser ones,” he said. “They look for only the clear, obvious targets.”

He called on Muslims to “break free from the slavery of these regimes who are slaves of America,” citing Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Richard Boucher, the State Department spokesman, said the recording showed that Iraq and Al Qaeda are “bound by a common hatred.”

Secretary of State Colin L. Powell revealed the tape’s existence at a Senate Budget Committee hearing. He said he had a transcript of it Tuesday morning, hours before Al Jazeera acknowledged having the tape. The State Department declined to say how it obtained the transcript.

Powell told the U.N. Security Council last week that Hussein’s regime has provided support for members of Al Qaeda.

“Once again, [Bin Laden] speaks to the people of Iraq and talks about their struggle and how he is in partnership with Iraq,” Powell said. “This nexus between terrorists and a state that is developing weapons of mass destruction can no longer be looked away from and ignored.”

The tape did little to settle the debate over how much, if any, support Hussein has given Al Qaeda, or vice versa.

“It doesn’t really make the case that Al Qaeda is in league with Iraq,” said Kenneth Katzman, a terrorism expert at the Congressional Research Service. “He basically calls Saddam’s party communists, and basically casts him as just another Arab dictator. Actually, it’s quite derogatory to Saddam.”

He and others said Hussein would not welcome Bin Laden’s support precisely because it further weakens the Iraqi leader’s position internationally.

“My overall sense is that if there’s one person rooting for the United States to go to war against Iraq, it’s Osama bin Laden,” said Juliette Kayyem, a Harvard University professor who was a member of the National Commission on Terrorism. “He views that as being so disruptive, as engendering so much anti-Americanism, as bringing so many new recruits to his cause, that he will benefit.”

Testifying before the Senate Intelligence Committee, the CIA’s Tenet said Iraq is harboring at least two dozen members of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, an organization that he said is “indistinguishable from Al Qaeda.” He also said two senior Al Qaeda planners have been in Baghdad since May.

Tenet said their presence constitutes an “operational base” for Al Qaeda in Baghdad. He said the operatives couldn’t function in Iraq without the tacit cooperation of Hussein’s own intelligence apparatus.

Tenet also said there is new evidence of an Al Qaeda presence in Iran. He did not elaborate, but officials have previously said that Al Qaeda figures fled to Iran after the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan.

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Times staff writer Robin Wright contributed to this report.

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‘Fight the allies of the devil’

Following are excerpts from a taped message believed to be from Osama bin Laden, as broadcast on Qatar-based Al Jazeera TV.

A message to our Muslim brothers in Iraq.... We are following with great interest and concern the preparation of the crusaders to launch war to occupy a former capital of Islam, to pillage the wealth of Muslims and install a puppet government that follows the dictates of its masters in Washington and Tel Aviv.

We want to affirm a number of important factors amid this unjust war -- the war of infidels led by America.... Fight the allies of the devil.

Firstly, we stress the loyal intentions that the fighting should be in the name of God only, not in the name of national ideologies nor to seek victory for the ignorant governments that rule all Arab states, including Iraq. Secondly, we remind that victory is from God alone....

Thirdly, it became known to us from our fighting against the American enemy that he principally depends in his fighting on psychological warfare because of his massive propaganda capabilities, and on intense air bombardment to hide his prominent weaknesses, and those are fear, cowardice and the absence of a fighting spirit among American soldiers.

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They are fighting for weapons and oil traders ... including the gang of criminals at the White House. I add to that the personal and crusader spite of Bush the father.

It also became known to us that the best and most effective available method to deplete the airpower of the enemy crusade is by digging armed and camouflaged trenches in large numbers....Brothers in Iraq, don’t be scared of what America is propagating, such as the lies about its forces and its smart bombs and laser-guided bombs. The smart bombs have no sizable effect in the mountains, trenches and forests.

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We stress the importance of martyrdom attacks against the enemy. These attacks inflicted on America and Israel a disaster they have never experienced before.

We say to honest Muslims that they must move, incite and mobilize the nation amid these great events to liberate themselves from the enslavement of these oppressive, unjust, apostate ruling governments, which in turn are enslaved by America, and to establish the rule of God on Earth, and the most eligible for liberation are Jordan, Morocco, Nigeria, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Source: Reuters