IRAQ: Baghdad yesterday dismissed US charges that the tape broadcast by the Qatari al-Jazeera satellite television station confirmed a link between Iraq and al-Qaeda.
The Iraqi Vice-President, Mr Taha Yassin Ramadan, denied that his country had any connection with the group or has sheltered any of its operatives.
He said the US is using the allegation of links as a pretext to attack Iraq.
"They are looking for oil, Arab oil," he asserted, "and want to protect the Zionist entity \ which has usurped the land of the Arabs." An Arab source who says he viewed all of the poor quality 16-minute tape, allegedly made by Osama bin Laden, made the point that the speaker was addressing the Iraqi people and not their leaders.
He advised Iraqis to remain steadfast if they are attacked by the US "Crusaders" and called upon all Muslims to come to their aid.
He also declared non-Islamic Arab rulers, including President Saddam Hussein, to be "unbelievers," or "apostates" from Islam and ruled that their "blood is halal," meaning that it is permissible to kill him. The source said the message is essentially intended to undermine what bin Laden calls the "communist socialist government" rather than exhibit any affinity with it.
Mr Walid Phares, an Arabic speaking analyst with MSNBC, said the tape showed that bin Laden "can't wait till the demise of Saddam; he is trying to position himself to offer Iraqis an alternative ideology" to secular Ba'athism.
While there were few Arabic papers yesterday due to the Muslim holiday, Arabic speakers consulted by The Irish Times said that the excerpts of the tape broadcast by Western satellite television networks were out of context and mistranslated. In addition to political exhortations, the message included advice on spiritual as well as mundane matters such as abstaining from alcohol and illicit sex and showing respect to one's parents.
Mr Yusif said that there were "all kinds of threats in the region" which, in his view, should be dealt with through "political and diplomatic means" rather than the use of force.
The repetition of material previously broadcast by bin Laden, the scratchy quality of the tape and its release shortly after the the US Secretary of State, Mr Colin Powell, revealed its existence in testimony before Congress, prompted speculation among conspiracy-minded Arab journalists that the tape could be a fabrication spliced together from audio and video tapes made earlier by bin Laden.
Although al-Jazeera claims it received the latest tape the same way similar tapes were transmitted by al-Qaeda, Washington had a copy and a translation of the message well before the tape was broadcast.
"At a minimum, Washington decided on the timing of al-Jazeera's broadcast of the tape," one journalist remarked.