“The U.S. arrogance and crime has reached such an extent," voice said to be of Zawahri

DUBAI, September 29 (IslamOline.net & News Agencies) – The United States had called on Saudi Arabia to stop printing the Qur’an because it was full of provocations, claimed a voice in a new tape purportedly recorded by Osama bin Laden’s top aide Ayman al-Zawahiri.

The tape lashed out at a U.S. congressional report on the September 11 attacks with a classified section on whether there was Saudi support for the hijackers, 15 of whom were allegedly from the Islamic kingdom.

"The section which the U.S. government classified...contains a proposal to prevent the Saudi government from printing and distributing copies of the holy Qur’an because it contains verses calling for hatred of Jews and Christians," the voice said.

"The U.S. arrogance and crime has reached such an extent," it said in the tape broadcast by Dubai-based Al-Arabiya and Qatar's Al-Jazeera and carried by Agence France-Presse (AFP).

Washington has rejected Saudi requests to declassify  the report on the grounds that it would compromise intelligence, as Riyadh has criticized the report and said it has nothing to hide.

Relations between Saudi Arabia and the U.S have been marked by tension, as Washington ordered diplomats of all U.S. Embassy and consular personnel to leave the kingdom after the devastating triple bombings in Riyadh in May 2003 – in which eight Americans were killed.

The kingdom faced a barrage of criticisms from the United States that it did too little to prevent after Washington had sent a presidential envoy to warn the kingdom of an imminent attack.

The speaker urged Muslims to unite to "resist the crusader-Jewish campaign seeking to finish off Islam and Muslims" under the pretext of fighting terrorism.

As to the "deals" struck by "the criminal Jew Sharon" during his recent visit to India, said the speaker in a reference to Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, "they are a drop in the ocean of the American-Jewish-Indian alliance against Muslims.”

Overthrowing Musharraf

The Sunday tape also called on Pakistanis to overthrow President Pervez Musharraf, and claimed that the United States, and on Muslims to resist the U.S.-led "crusade".

"Muslims in Pakistan must unite and cooperate to topple this traitor and install a sincere leadership that would defend Islam and Muslims," the speaker said.

"It is Musharraf who enabled America to topple the (Taliban's) Islamic emirate in Afghanistan. Had it not been for his tremendous help, America would not have been able to do this, nor would it have been able to kill thousands of innocents in Afghanistan," the voice purported to be Zawahiri's said.

The claim was a reference to the U.S.-led attacks on Afghanistan launched in October 2001, a month after the September 11 attacks on the United States, allegedly to root out bin Laden, who Washington believed was being sheltered by the Taliban.

‘Alive’

The speaker suggested that both Bin Laden, whose al-Qaeda network is blamed – by Washington - for the hijackings, and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar, whose whereabouts have been unknown since the Taliban regime was ousted, were alive.

The "sole crime" committed by Omar, "may God keep him," was that he "refused to bow to America's arrogance and tyranny and refused to hand over the mujahedeen to her," the voice said.

"And the sole crime committed by Sheikh Osama bin Laden, may God keep him, is that he decided to exact revenge from America for the crimes it perpetrates in Palestine and all Muslim lands," the speaker said.

"It is Musharraf who is seeking to recognize Israel in a bid to gain full American approval ... It is Musharraf who is seeking to send Pakistani forces to Iraq so that they, rather than American soldiers, are killed and so that they kill Muslims in Iraq and enable America to control Muslim lands."

He also warned Pakistani army officers and soldiers that Musharraf would "hand you over to the Hindus and flee to enjoy his secret (bank) accounts" if India attacked their country.

Nor would Washington reward Musharraf for his services.

Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was "a living example" of what happens to "traitors," the speaker said.

"He gave Israel and America all that they asked for. But despite this, they are now incarcerating him in his office (in the West Bank town of Ramallah) ... and lately decided to expel him."

‘Unimpressive’

In a quick reaction to the calls for overthrow, the tape invoked little response Monday from Pakistani Muslim and militant leaders.

The Islamic republic's largest Muslim party, Jamaat-i-Islami (JI), which campaigns fervently against Musharraf, dismissed the audiotape's calls as violent.

"We do not subscribe to Zawahiri's or anyone else's views," JI senator Khurshid Ahmed told AFP.

"We have strong differences with Musharraf's policies and are democratically trying to influence him to bring a change. We have our own strategy of Islamic restructuring and it is through power of the ballot and a democratic struggle," he added.

Neither Al-Arabiya nor Al-Jazeera said when the tape was recorded and its authenticity could not be confirmed, but the remarks were replete with references to recent events such as Sharon's September 8-10 visit to India and developments in Iraq and the Palestinian territories.

The outburst against Musharraf were strikingly similar to attacks on the Pakistani leader in another audiotape attributed to Zawahiri by Al-Jazeera on the eve of the second anniversary of 9/11, and which CIA experts later assessed as authentic.

At the time, the Doha-based satellite channel also broadcast a videotape showing bin Laden and Zawahiri in an "undetermined mountain area" and said it had probably been recorded toward the end of April or in early May.