New Recording May Be Threat From bin Laden

Even with a $25 million price on Mr. bin Laden's head, American intelligence agencies have obtained little solid information about him. The failure to either kill or capture him has been a great frustration for the Bush administration.

Soon after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush declared that he wanted Mr. bin Laden "dead or alive," but after months of fruitless searching in Afghanistan and elsewhere, American officials gradually began to play down the importance of catching him. Mr. Bush and other officials began to say that Mr. bin Laden's fate had become almost irrelevant to the campaign against terrorism, because he was either dead or in hiding, and either way no longer as grave a threat to the United States as he had been.

Still, the doubts about whether he had survived American bombing raids in Afghanistan underscored the government's frustrations in trying to dismantle Al Qaeda, and the possibility that he was still at large seemed to bring the military action in Afghanistan to an incomplete end.

More troubling to American officials has been the evidence in recent weeks that Al Qaeda appears to be regrouping to launch another round of attacks against Western targets.

The sudden re-emergence of Mr. bin Laden (or someone who sounds like him) at a time when the United States is threatening war on Iraq complicates American policy.

Arab leaders have been warning since Sept. 11 that the failure of the United States to stem the Israeli-Palestinian violence would serve as the main recruiting tool for extremists, and that starting another conflict in the region would only strengthen the appeal from Mr. bin Laden for continued war against the West.

The tape seems timed to coincide with mounting anger in the Mideast over the threat of an invasion of Iraq if President Saddam Hussein does not allow renewed weapons inspections.

In the tape, several administration figures are named. Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld is accused of being responsible for the death of two million people in the Vietnam War. The man on the tape says both Vice President Dick Cheney and Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, in their roles as leaders during the Persian Gulf war, visited more destruction on Baghdad than Halagu, the 13th-century Mongol and grandson of Genghis Khan, who sacked what was then a center of Islamic civilization.

The specific terrorist attacks that the man on the tape mentioned as a taste of things to come included the death of German tourists in a synagogue explosion in Tunisia on April 11, the attack against the French tanker in Yemen on Oct. 6, a bombing of French naval experts in Karachi on May 8, the killing of an American marine in Kuwait on Oct. 8, the Oct. 12 explosion in Bali, with its high toll of Australians and Britons, and the hostage-taking in a Moscow theater on Oct. 23.

In one of the references that showed the speaker was paying close attention to recent news, he dismissed reports that the bombing in Bali had meant to strike Americans rather than Australians. He said that despite warnings, Australia had joined American forces in Afghanistan and worked against Muslims in gaining independence for East Timor.
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/13/international/middleeast/13OSAM.html?pagewanted=all&position=top