Osama warns Europe, says stop ‘helping’ US

“The events of Manhattan were retaliation against the American-Israeli alliance’s aggression against our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and I am the only one responsible for it. The Afghan people and Government knew nothing about it. America knows that,” the al-Qaeda leader said.

Two brief excerpts of the tape titled “Message to the European Peoples” were initially broadcast on Thursday on Al-Jazeera television. An English transcript of the entire five-minute tape was later provided to The Associated Press by the SITE Institute and the IntelCenter, both private groups that monitor terror web sites.

The message appeared to be another attempt by the terror mastermind to influence public opinion in the West. In 2004, he offered Europeans a truce if they stopped attacking Muslims, then later spoke of a truce with the US. In both cases, al-Qaeda then denounced those areas for not accepting its offer.

In the latest tape, bin Laden said that Afghans have been caught up in decades of struggle, first “at the hands of the Russians… and before their wounds had healed and their grief had ended, they were invaded without right by your unjust governments”.

He said the war was “waged against the Afghans without right”, and that coalition troops have not followed the “protocol of warfare”. He said the result was that most bomb victims have been women and children.

State Department spokesman Sean McCormack dismissed the new tape as typical of bin Laden’s tactics and expressed faith in the European allies.

“I think our NATO allies understand quite clearly what is at stake in Afghanistan as well as elsewhere around the world in fighting the war on terror,” he said. “It’s going to require a sustained commitment over a period of time and we have seen that kind of commitment from our European allies.”

FBI analysts were reviewing the tape but were not able to say when it might have been recorded nor could they provide other details. Spokesman Richard Kolko said it was being examined “to determine if it is authentic and for any intelligence value”.

“As the FBI has said since 9/11, bin Laden was responsible for the attack,” Kolko said in a statement.

Bin Laden issued four public statements earlier this year — on September 7, September 11, September 20 and October 22.

Al-Qaeda has dramatically stepped up its messages — a pace seen as a sign of its increasing technical sophistication and the relative security felt by its leadership.