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Thursday, Feb. 13, 2003

The presumption that al-Qaeda's Islamist extremism negated the possibility of cooperation with secular, socialist Baghdad is false, it said.

"He is exhorting the people of Iraq to engage, to roll up their sleeves, to prepare for jihad, a cause that he shares," White House spokesman Ari Fleischer said.

In Fleischer's quoting of the tape, the voice Washington says belongs to bin Laden says, "It will not hurt under these circumstances that the interest of the Muslims would meet with the socialist to fight the crusaders."

Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein's ruling Baath party is regarded as socialist. In the tape played on the pan-Arab Al Jazeera television network, the voice identified as bin Laden's labels Baghdad's leaders "infidels."

Fleischer said Wednesday the tape showed bin Laden and Iraq were linked.

"If that is not an unholy partnership, I've not heard of one," he said.

Germany Still Refuses to Believe

Germany, which has billions invested in Saddam Hussein's regime, insisted Wednesday that the tape did not prove links between al-Qaeda and Iraq.

"From what is known so far, we don't think we can conclude that there is evidence of an axis or close link between the regime in Baghdad and al-Qaeda," government spokesman Thomas Steg told reporters.

Fleischer responded that Berlin was determined to ignore the evidence.

British Defense Minister Geoffrey Hoon said the tape "clearly" linked bin Laden to Saddam Hussein's regime.

"He sets out in detail a connection between his activities and the activities of the al-Qaeda and Iraq. He said that, not us," said Hoon, who accompanied U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld at a Pentagon press conference Wednesday.

Existence of the tape was disclosed in a congressional hearing by Secretary of State Colin Powell, who said it was to be played on Al Jazeera, which has played audio and videotapes from the terrorist mastermind in the past. How the United States obtained the transcripts of the tape before the station even acknowledged having it has not been disclosed.

Powell last week appeared before the U.N. Security Council detailing Iraq's defiance of disarmament mandates and urging strong action against the Baghdad regime. During that appearance, he linked Iraq with al-Qaeda and noted contacts between them, the presence of an al-Qaeda training camp in the north of the country and the presence of what he called an operating cell in Iraq.

"Now lay on top of that an audiotape of the leader of al-Qaeda urging his followers, wherever they are, and explicitly in Iraq as mujahedin brothers ... to roll up their sleeves and join in jihad, this is the nightmare that people have warned about, the linking up of Iraq and al-Qaeda," Fleischer said.

Al-Qaeda is believed guilty of the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon in September 2001 that killed nearly 3,000 people. The group is also guilty of the attacks on two U.S. Embassies in Africa, the bombing of the USS Cole, and more recently the assassination in Jordan of a U.S. government worker.

Tuesday's audiotape is being studied to authenticate it, but it is widely believed the voice on the tape is indeed that of bin Laden. The al-Qaeda leader is believed to have escaped U.S. military operations in Afghanistan that dismantled his organization in that country.

Fleischer said the tape was not connected with the government's decision Friday to increase the terror alert status to orange, indicating a high risk of terrorist attack.

In Baghdad Wednesday, Muhammad Muzaffar al-Adhami, a member of Iraq's National Assembly, or parliament, said the tape did not prove anything. "This message is new evidence that there is no relationship between al-Qaeda and Iraq," he told Al Jazeera. "There is clear evidence in the message showing that there is no such relationship."

He said if the tape were authentic, Baghdad could not speak for bin Laden's comments.

"This is his own viewpoint and Iraq has nothing to do with it," he said.

Copyright 2003 by United Press International.

All rights reserved.

Read more on this subject in related Hot Topics:

Al-Qaeda

Bush Administration

Middle East

Saddam Hussein/Iraq

War on Terrorism

Editor's note:
Revealed: The Terrorists Living Among Us