Bin Laden calls for support for Hamas government

Osama bin Laden called for his followers across the Islamic world to support the Hamas government in the Palestinian territories and start a holy war in Darfur, according to a new audiotape issued today.

In his first public pronouncement in three months, the leader of al Qaeda also appeared to justify attacks on civilians in the West by declaring they bore responsibility for 'the attack on Islam' being carried out by their governments.

Bin Laden also used the tape, broadcast on Arab satellite television station al-Jazeera, to scathingly criticise liberal Muslims who advocate a dialogue with the West and demanded that the Danish cartoonists responsible for the drawings of the Prophet Mohammed be handed over to him for punishment.

In response to bin Laden's call, Hamas insisted that its ideology was very different from that of al Qaeda but warned that international sanctions imposed since it won the Palestinian elections were fuelling Muslim anger.

Spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri added: "There is an international siege against the Palestinian people and it's natural that this tension create an impression of Western-Israeli alliance against the Palestinians."

The Israeli government maintained that by focusing on the issue of the Palestinians, bin Laden was attempting to recoup ground lost to growing antipathy in the Muslim world to al Qaeda's campaign of indiscriminate suicide bombings.

Recent reports state that al Qaeda and its affiliates are attempting to recruit in Gaza and the West Bank.

But both Palestinian and Israeli officials agree that they have made little headway so far.

Al Jazeera appeared to have had bin Laden's message long enough to carry out fairly extensive editing with commentary interspersed with the text.

There had been recent reports that bin Laden, who suffers from kidney ailment, has been unwell.

His purported voice on the tape, however, sounded relatively strong and clear.

"The blockade which the West is imposing on the government of Hamas proves that there is a Zionist Crusader war on Islam", he said.

Responding to the condemnation of bombing attacks on the public such as those in London and Madrid, bin Laden said: "I say this was is the joint responsibility of the people and the governments. While the war continues, the people renew their allegiance to their rulers and continue to send their sons to our countries to fight us.

"Nobody is showing any concern for the fact that our countries are being burned, our houses shelled, and our people killed."

Turning his attention to Sudan's troubled region of Darfur, where the government and its allied Janjaweed militia have been accused of ethnic cleansing of the province's black population, bin Laden said: "I call on Mujaheddin and their supporters, especially in Sudan and the Arab peninsula, to prepare for long war against the crusader plunderers in Western Sudan.

"Our goal is not defending the Khartoum government but to defend Islam, its land and its people. I urge holy warriors to be acquainted with the land and the tribes of Dafur."

Bin Laden was based in Sudan from 1991 until he was expelled in 1994 following US and Saudi Arabian pressure on the Khartoum government.

When US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania were bombed in August 1988 the Washington retaliated with cruise missile strikes on the Al Shifa pharmaceutical plant in Khartoum, claiming it was used to make chemical weapons.

Bin Laden and his senior lieutenants are said to have maintained contact with Islamist groups in Sudan backing the government.

The United Nations is in the process of a possible deployment of a peacekeeping force to Darfur following the failure of African Union monitors to stop the violence that has so far claimed 180,000 lives and the displacement of two million people.

Any campaign by Islamist fighters is expected to be directed against the international force.

The CIA said it was analysing the tape recording to determine its authenticity.

US security officials say that bin Laden may be living in the mountainous regions of Pakistan, separately from his immediate coterie, including deputy Ayman al-Zawahri.

In Washington, Republican Representative Peter Hoekstra, chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, said bin Laden's internet techniques "would make a politician proud. The quality of the materials, the quality of the marketing - the message is very, very good."

He continued that it "recognises that much of this war, this battle that we're fighting, is about winning the hearts and the minds of moderate Islam, and they are focused on that. We need to be focused on it."

- INDEPENDENT