DUBAI - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden said the crisis in Sudan's
Darfur region and the isolation of Hamas were proof the West was waging war
against Islam, according to an audiotape attributed to him aired on Sunday.
In the tape broadcast on Al Jazeera television, which U.S. intelligence
agencies believed was authentic, the Saudi-born militant criticised the Sudanese
government for agreeing a U.S.-backed peace deal for the south.
Al Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden speaks at a
news conference in Afghanistan in this May 26, 1998 file photo. Osama bin
Laden said Western efforts to isolate the Palestinian Hamas government and
the Darfur crisis in Sudan were examples of the West's "crusader war"
against Islam, according to an audiotape aired on April 23, 2006.
[Reuters] |
He also inveighed against the
Palestinians' Hamas-led government for breaking what he said was a taboo against
"joining infidel assemblies" and entering parliament.
Despite moves taken by Sudan and Hamas that might be seen as in step with
Washington's stated goal of peace and democracy for the region, bin Laden said
the West was still isolating the Palestinian government and the United States
was planning to send troops to southern Sudan "to steal its oil."
"Their (the West's) rejection of Hamas affirms that it is a Crusader-Zionist
war against Muslims," bin Laden said.
"It is scornful to people that your (the West's) warplanes and tanks are
destroying houses over the heads of our folk and children in Palestine, Iraq,
Afghanistan, Chechnya and Pakistan, then you smile at us and say that 'we are
not enemies of Islam but enemies of terrorists'."
"Reality shows that they lie."
Bin Laden accused people in the West of sharing responsibility for their
countries' war against Muslims, implying they were fair game for revenge attacks
against militants.
Bin Laden also urged his followers to prepare for a long war against Western
would-be occupiers in Darfur.
"I call on the mujahideen and their supporters in Sudan ... and the Arabian
peninsula to prepare all that is necessary to wage a long-term war against the
Crusaders in western Sudan," bin Laden said, accusing the West of seeking to
divide Sudan.
Sudan hosted bin Laden in the 1990s, but on the tape he criticised a
U.S.-backed peace deal between Khartoum and southern rebels and slammed the
Sudanese government for not enforcing Islamic sharia law throughout the country.
Sudan is resisting pressure for U.N. peacekeepers to deploy in Darfur. Some
U.N. troops have arrived in southern Sudan, the first of an expected 10,000
peacekeepers to be sent there.
Bin Laden condemned the United Nations as an "infidel" body.
"It is a tool to implement Crusader-Zionist resolutions, among which are the
resolutions of war against us (Muslims) and those to divide and occupy our
land," he said.
GOOD RELATIONS
The Sudanese government and Hamas rejected bin Laden's criticism outright.
"We are interested in good relations with the West and we call on the Western
countries to reconsider their stance toward the Palestinian cause and the Muslim
nation," Hamas's official spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Sami Abu Zuhri, told
Reuters.
In Sudan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jamal Ibrahim said Khartoum distanced
itself from bin Laden's statement.
"In Sudan we are not concerned with any mujahideen or any crusade or any war
with the international community. We are keen on reaching a peaceful solution to
the crisis in Darfur," he said.
In the excerpts, bin Laden did not repeat his assertion in the last audiotape
attributed to him broadcast on January 19 that al Qaeda was preparing attacks in
the United States but was open to a conditional truce with Americans.
But his remarks about the complicity of Westerners in the policies of their
governments appeared to be an argument that they were fair game for revenge
attacks by militants.
"The war is a responsibility shared between the people and the governments.
The war goes on and the people are renewing their allegiance to its rulers and
masters," bin Laden said.
The al Qaeda leader, on the run since the U.S. campaign to oust Afghanistan's
Taliban government in 2001 after the September 11 attacks, said Western leaders
had ignored his truce offers.
Bin Laden and his right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding
in a mountainous area on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.
The tape appears to have been recorded since March 14 when Israel raided a
jail in Jericho because bin Laden mentioned the West Bank incident.