Source: Al Jazeera

January 25, 2010

Osama bin Laden has warned Barack Obama, the US president, that there will be further attacks on the United States unless he takes steps to resolve the Palestinian situation.

In an audio tape obtained by Al Jazeera on Sunday, the al-Qaeda chief, praised the Nigerian accused of a failed attempt to blow up an airliner heading for Detroit on Christmas Day.

"The message I want to convey to you through the plane of the hero Umar Farouk [Abdulmutallab], reaffirms a previous message that the heroes of 9/11 conveyed to you," Bin Laden said.

"America will never dream of living in peace unless we live it in Palestine. It is unfair that you enjoy a safe life while our brothers in Gaza suffer greatly.

"Therefore, with God's will, our attacks on you will continue as long as you continue to support Israel," bin Laden said.

"If it was possible to carry our messages to you by words we wouldn't have carried them to you by planes."

'Same hollow justifications'

The Obama administration said intelligence analysts had not confirmed that the al-Qaeda leader's voice was on the tape.

But it quickly dismissed its significance.

David Axelrod, a senior Obama adviser, told CNN's State of the Union programme that "assuming that it is him, his message contains the same hollow justifications for the mass slaughters of innocents that we've heard before".

"And the irony is that he's killed more Muslims than people from any other religion - he's a murderer," Axelrod added.

Palestinian 'frontline'

Phil Rees, the author of Dining with Terrorists, told Al Jazeera: "Bin Laden has a great sense of timing; it's a complete poke in the eye to President Obama at a time when Obama is domestically suffering.

"The reference to Palestine is possibly the most interesting part of this because he almost now becomes the al-Qaeda leader that speaks about Palestine."What you've now got in Gaza is bin Laden looking at the situation where there's a peace process which is going nowhere, and in an ironic way, Hamas is at the frontline of the battle with al-Qaeda there."