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New Bin Laden "Video Message" Urges Strikes Against U.S.
KABUL, Dec. 28 (News Agencies) - In a videotape message aired in the Arab world on Thursday, Saudi exile Osama bin Laden urged his followers to hit the U.S. economy "with every available means," while an Afghan minister warned his al-Qaeda network still posed a global threat, news agencies reported.
The Western world's most wanted man, in a clip aired by Qatar's Al-Jazeera television, also hailed the 19 "students" whom he said "shook the American empire" when they destroyed New York's World Trade Center and crashed into the Pentagon on deadly September 11, Agence France-Presse (AFP) said.
It was unclear when the video - showing a "tired and gaunt" bin Laden, according to AFP - was shot, and some analysts said it might date back to November.
Although U.S. special forces and Afghan fighters continue to search the mountains of eastern Afghanistan for signs of the Saudi dissident, there is also speculation he may have been killed during a fierce two-week bombardment.
Bin Laden said in the video that the U.S. economy was the foundation of the country's military might, "and if their economy is finished they will become too busy to enslave oppressed people."
"I stress the importance of carrying on jihadi action [struggle] against America militarily and economically," he said.
AFP said that bin Laden also gave details of the 19 men who launched the September 11 attacks that shocked the world and provoked the U.S. campaign against Afghanistan's former leaders, the Taliban regime.
He said 15 of them, including two brothers, came from Saudi Arabia. Two more were from the United Arab Emirates, another from Egypt and the final one from the Levant, bordering the eastern Mediterranean.
Afghanistan's new Interior Minister, Yunus Qanooni, said Thursday that while the U.S.-led war on terrorism had damaged bin Laden's al-Qaeda network, and forced it to flee Afghanistan after the defeat of its Taliban protectors, its leadership remained in place.
"Al-Qaeda has only lost geography, not its leadership. Al-Qaeda is a very dangerous network. The incidents of September the 11th were not small incidents," he told AFP.
As the world focused on the whereabouts of bin Laden, an Afghan defense ministry official said he was living in the mountains on the Afghanistan-Pakistan limit under the protection of a hardline Islamic leader.
Mohammad Habeel, spokesman for Defense Minister Mohammad Qasim Fahim, said "reliable intelligence sources" reported bin Laden had crossed from the Tora Bora region of eastern Afghanistan into Pakistan about a week ago.
Since then, Habeel said, he has been staying in a tribal area controlled by Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam (JUI) leader Fazlur Rahman, but he may have moved back and forth across the border.
But the Pakistan-based JUI said the accusations were "baseless" and an attempt to discredit the group. A top Pakistani official also dismissed the reports as "trash."
Bin Laden said the U.S. air attacks which began on October 7 in Afghanistan showed "that the West in general, and America in particular, have an unspeakable hatred for Islam."
But Afghanistan's Justice Minister Abdul Rahim Karimi said the new government sworn in Saturday rejected the "clash of civilizations" theory touted by bin Laden and aims to be part of the global community.
"We want to belong to the world, to develop friendly relations with everyone, with all the Muslim nations, with our neighbors, and we completely oppose terrorism," Karimi said.
Diplomats have already begun returning to Kabul. German officials said Friday they had taken up residence in their country's mission as Berlin prepares to send 1,200 peacekeeping troops to Afghanistan.
German sources told AFP that although the embassy has not officially reopened, officials were engaged in a series of meetings.
Despite the new government's attempts to focus on reconstruction and security, the controversy over last week's deadly U.S. bombing raid on a road convoy, which reportedly left 65 people dead, continued.
U.S. officials say they are convinced the vehicles contained Taliban leaders and al-Qaeda members, who had fled the U.S. bombing in nearby Tora Bora.
But an Afghan tribal official said were no al-Qaeda members in the convoy, and that only a few former Taliban members were among the group of mostly tribal elders.
Residents of an eastern village said separately that some 40 civilians were killed and 20 injured early Thursday when U.S. planes pounded the settlement.
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