Washington, November 13
Using sophisticated electronic equipment, US intelligence agencies today pressed to identify the speaker on an audio tape believed to be the elusive Al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden warning US allies against backing the “White House gang of butchers.”
US officials told Reuters that linguists had listened to the new tape released by the Arabic-language television channel Al-Jazeera in Dubai yesterday and believed it was the fugitive Bin Laden.
But they said the government was using voice analysis to compare it with previous tapes made by the radical Islamic leader. “They have had linguists listen to it and believe it is him, but electronic analysis is being done,” said one official, who asked not to be identified. “It is probably him, but we don’t know (for certain),” said another.
If authenticated, the tape would be the clearest evidence yet that Bin Laden survived the US-led military campaign in Afghanistan that toppled his Taliban hosts and sought to flush out Al-Qaida, which the USA blames for the September 11, 2001, attacks.
In the tape, the speaker hailed the October 12 Bali bomb blasts, the killing of a US Marine in Kuwait, the bombing of a French oil tanker off Yemen and last month’s Chechen hostage-taking in Moscow.
The speaker said the attacks were retaliatory strikes against US allies by “pious Muslims defending their religion and heeding God’s orders.”
He said his message was particularly addressed to the people of Britain, France, Germany, Italy, Canada and Australia. “The road to safety (for the West) starts with stopping aggression,” he said.
Bin Laden’s fate has long been a mystery, with US officials saying they would assume he was alive until presented with evidence to the contrary.
The last time the US authorities had evidence Bin Laden was alive was in December, 2001. They have pursued him along the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, where Al-Qaida members fled following the US bombing of Afghanistan.
“We’re not making judgments at this point as to whose voice is on the tape,” Sean McCormack, spokesman for the White House National Security Council, said on Tuesday.
But if confirmed as Bin Laden, “It won’t affect the war on terrorism,” he said. “This is not about any one person. We’re going to continue to go after every member of the Al-Qaida terrorist organisation.”
Jazeera, which did not say how it obtained the tape, has often carried statements by Bin Laden and his aides. The most recent event mentioned in the tape took place on October 28.
Reuters
