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Bin Laden Appears on Al-Jazeera Again
DUBAI, Nov 3. (IslamOnline & News Agencies) - Osama bin Laden on Saturday again used the Arabic satellite television channel al-Jazeera to put across his recorded messages, this time vehemently attacking the United Nations and Arab leaders.
Bin Laden had made a first statement on Al-Jazeera on October 7, the same day that U.S. strikes began on Afghanistan. The Qatar-based network said it did not know when or where bin Laden recorded the tape, CNN said.
The BBC reports that editors at al-Jazeera say the tape was delivered to their offices in the Kabul. It is the fifth statement they have received from bin Laden since the beginning of October - most of them in the form of pre-recorded videotapes.
In the video bin Laden pledged that the United States would "no longer know security" and said that a "group of Muslims" had committed the attacks of September 11, but had stopped short of claiming responsibility for them.
In the same transmission, the spokesman for al-Qaeda, Suleiman Abu Ghaith, appealed for a
jihad (struggle) and said the group was ready for "confrontation with the United States."
The BBC reported that bin Laden said the conflict in Afghanistan was "primarily a religious war" between Christianity and Islam.
Bin Laden also condemned the U.S.-led bombing campaign in Afghanistan and claimed it was targeting Afghan civilians, an allegation the Pentagon denies, CNN reports.
Bin Laden then turned on Arab leaders, calling them non-believers, and on the United Nations, blaming it for Muslim suffering, in his second appearance since the start of U.S. strikes on Afghanistan.
He also said that the United States had no proof to justify the strikes "against the Afghan people" and described U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan as a "criminal".
Bin Laden also said that those Muslims who support U.S. President George W. Bush had "renounced their religion" and called on Muslims to defend "their religion and their brothers in Afghanistan."
Al-Jazeera also broadcast two video clips of Abu Ghaith, who said in the first transmission on October 10 that the "storm of planes will not stop, God willing, as thousands of young people of our nation want to die as much as the Americans want to live."
He repeated the threat against the United States in another message broadcast three days later, and laid down five conditions to Washington and London, taking up and broadening the demands already set out by officials of the bin Laden network.
"The storm will not calm as long as you [the United States and Britain] do not end your support for the Jews in Palestine, lift your embargo from around the Iraqi people, and have left the Arabian peninsula," said Abu Ghaith.
Senior U.S. government officials called bin Laden's latest videotaped message an "act of desperation" that will only cause irreparable damage to himself and his cause, CNN reported.
The network reports that U.S. officials said the exiled Saudi millionaire made a "grave error" by taking on the United Nations and insinuating the leaders of Jordan, Egypt, Syria and Iraq are non-believers. In attacking Arab countries, they said, bin Laden has alienated "millions of moderate Muslims."
Earlier in the week, on Thursday, Al-Jazeera broadcast a statement by bin Laden urging Muslims in Pakistan to "confront the crusade against Islam" accusing the Pakistani government of "standing under the banner of the Cross while Muslims are being slaughtered in Afghanistan."
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