December 27 1:49 AM ET New Videotape Adds Fresh Urgency to Bin Laden Hunt Photos

Reuters Photo Slideshows

AP Photo Terrorism & Sept. 11 Attacks Audio/Video Special Forces Entering Tora Bora (Reuters) By Jeremy Page and Brian Williams

KABUL/WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A new videotape of Osama bin Laden (news - web sites), apparently made earlier this month, is likely to intensify the hunt for the man the United States wants dead or alive for attacks on New York and Washington on September 11.

But U.S. efforts to enlist the help of local Afghan allies in scouring mountain caves and tunnels in the east for signs of the elusive al Qaeda leader were proving tougher than expected.

Looking tired and thin, but calm, bin Laden said he was speaking three months after the suicide attacks on the United States and two months after the start on October 7 of the U.S.-led war to punish him and his Taliban protectors.

``Our terrorism against the United States is blessed, aimed at repelling the oppressor so that America stops its support for Israel,'' bin Laden says in the videotape, which was broadcast by Qatar's al-Jazeera television.

``It is very clear that the West in general, spearheaded by America, holds an undescribable amount of Crusader loathing for Islam,'' he adds, dressed in a camouflage combat jacket with a Russian-designed submachinegun propped up beside him.

The White House dismissed the tape as ``terrorist propaganda.''

But the reference to the Crusaders is an emotive one for Arabs and Muslims as it harks back to successive invasions by medieval European Christians in the Middle East.

U.S. officials have stressed there is no let-up in the hunt for bin Laden, for whom Washington has offered a $25 million reward. The September attacks killed more than 3,000 people.

``We're always looking for bin Laden,'' said a U.S. defense official, who asked not to be named.

U.S. forces have been pressing their Afghan allies to join them in searching the eastern Tora Bora region for any al Qaeda fighters still holding out or for bin Laden himself.

But the U.S. official said local forces had been reluctant to return to the area, saying their work was done after they helped flush out al Qaeda forces who were bombed into submission there earlier this month.

Late last week, about 500 Marines were put on stand-by in Afghanistan (news - web sites) for orders to search the Tora Bora caves, but none had been deployed yet, the official added.

The timing of the operation was up to Army General Tommy Franks, who heads the Tampa, Florida-based Central Command.

One option may be to use experimental ``thermobaric'' bombs to blast the air out of the underground mountain warrens, killing anyone holed up inside, the official said.

POCKETS OF RESISTANCE

The official said pockets of al Qaeda resistance -- which he estimated at fewer than six throughout Afghanistan -- remained an issue. He said the U.S. ability to root them out was constrained by fears of hurting civilians.

Photos

Reuters Photo In Kabul, Afghan Foreign Minister Abdullah Abdullah said groups of al Qaeda diehards still threatened violence.

``In some of the southern parts of Afghanistan, in Paktia province, we believe there are still pockets of al Qaeda,'' Abdullah told a news conference, adding that some al Qaeda were active around the former Taliban stronghold of Kandahar.

American troops would leave ``when the mission of eradicating terrorists and all Taliban bases is accomplished,'' he said.

Britain said on Wednesday it would send 300 more troops to help establish a U.N.-approved multinational force in Afghanistan. The troops would join several dozen British soldiers already in Kabul.

``They are being sent to ensure that conditions are right for the deployment of the international security force there,'' a British spokeswoman said.

Britain said last week it would commit around 1,500 troops to lead the force, which is expected to number up to 5,000. The force is not expected to be fully in place for at least a month.

Al-Qaeda fighters on the run -- and bandits taking advantage of the chaos -- posed a threat to growing numbers of refugees heading home to Afghanistan from neighboring countries.

Some 10,000 refugees had returned to southern Afghanistan through the Pakistani border town of Chaman since Sunday, said U.N. spokeswoman Stephanie Bunker. A Pakistani official said 800 families crossed on Tuesday.

``People seem to be going back largely to urban areas,'' Bunker said. ``People are going back in search of work and economic opportunities they hope to be able to find now.''

A World Food Program spokesman said in Islamabad armed militiamen were holding up aid trucks carrying food into southern Afghanistan from Pakistan, demanding a toll of $100 per truck before allowing them across the border.

The United Nations (news - web sites) estimates that some three million Afghan refugees are in Pakistan and 2.5 million in Iran. Another 1.5 million are displaced within the country.

As more details emerged about a Briton suspected of trying to blow up a transatlantic airliner last Saturday with explosives in his shoes, speculation strengthened that he may have been part of a wider plot.

The leader of a south London mosque said Richard Reid was a ''gullible'' young Londoner who converted to Islam in prison. U.S. officials told a newspaper the bomb's design suggested he had an accomplice.

U.S. investigators were still checking whether Reid, who is being held in Boston in the United States, had links to al Qaeda or other groups. He was overpowered by cabin crew and fellow passengers on an American Airlines flight from Paris to Miami when he was spotted trying to set fire to his shoes.

The head of London's Brixton mosque said Reid, 28, was a member of his congregation and ``very, very impressionable.''

Abdul Haqq Baker said it was possible Reid had known Zacarias Moussaoui, a French Muslim facing conspiracy charges in the United States over the September 11 attacks. He too lived in Brixton for a time.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2001

Answers

"Looking tired and thin, but calm..."

Can't help wondering if this is a clue, if he really was sick as rumored.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2001

There's been a lot of talk about the fact that Osama is left-handed and that he used only his right hand during this tape. His gun is also to his right, not the left; in fact, his left arm never moves. Experts have also said that the clip in his gun is the wrong one, whatever that means. He does look pale and wan, doesn't he? Cadaverish, I'd say. Perhaps he was badly wounded, was dying, and made the tape to keep things going.

Oh--talking heads also note there are discrepancies in time-frames he mentions. Who knows when this video was made?

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2001

The leader on the website said that Al-J aired the tape in full.

http://www.boston.com/news/daily/27/attacks_tape.htm

Al-Jazeera TV airs apparently recent tape of bin Laden, but no clues about where he is

By Donna Bryson, Associated Press, 12/26/01

CAIRO, Egypt -- Osama bin Laden, pale and gaunt after months of U.S. bombardment, defended "our terrorism" against the United States in a videotape apparently made in recent weeks and broadcast in full Thursday on an Arabic satellite channel.

Bin Laden, his beard gone mostly white, appeared sitting in front of a cave wall with a machine gun propped to his right. He praised the perpetrators of the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and the 1998 bombings of two U.S. embassies in eastern Africa.

But he did not directly take responsibility for the attacks, both of which have been blamed on his al-Qaida terror network.

Occasionally smiling, bin Laden said it was "inconceivable" that his followers would "go after innocent civilians."

"Our terrorism is against America. Our terrorism is a blessed terrorism to prevent the unjust person from committing injustice and to stop American support for Israel, which kills our sons," bin Laden said in the video. The Qatar-based television station Al-Jazeera had broadcast excerpts Wednesday and Thursday before playing the entire tape Thursday night.

Those who carried out the attacks on New York and Washington were "just 19 high school students -- may God accept them as martyrs - - who shook America, struck the American economy in the heart and hit the biggest military force at its heart with God's help," he said.

It was not clear where the tape -- which the United States dismissed as "propaganda" -- was made.

Bin Laden makes comments suggesting it was recorded in early or mid- December. He said he was speaking "three months after the blessed attack against the international infidels and their leaders, the United States, and two months after the beginning of the vicious aggression against Islam," apparent references to the Sept. 11 attacks and to the Oct. 7 start of U.S. retaliatory bombing of Afghanistan.

U.S. forces have been searching caves in the mountainous Tora Bora area of eastern Afghanistan, where bin Laden's al-Qaida fighters made their last stand. But for weeks, U.S. officials say, they have had no indication of where bin Laden might be -- in Tora Bora, elsewhere in Afghanistan, fleeing across Pakistan or even dead.

Pakistani President Gen. Pervez Musharraf said in China recently he was "reasonably sure" bin Laden had been killed by U.S. bombs at Tora Bora.

A spokesman for Afghanistan's new defense ministry said Thursday that bin Laden was in a border area of Pakistan with "friends" of a Pakistani Islamic activist.

The spokesman, Mohammad Abeel, did not give any sources for his information. And the interim prime minister, Hamid Karzai, said his government did not know where bin Laden was.

Abeel said bin Laden was with associates of Maulana Fazal-ur Rehman, the jailed leader of Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, a pro-Taliban Pakistani party. Rehman denied the report in a telephone interview with Al- Jazeera.

The new bin Laden tape, one of several Al-Jazeera has broadcast, showed the al-Qaida leader dressed in a green camouflage military jacket.

As he spoke into the camera, he gestured with his right hand, keeping his left hand still at his side. Bin Laden is left-handed, according to the FBI website. It wasn't clear if he avoided using that hand because of a problem or injury. Islam considers the right hand more blessed and left-handed gestures can be considered less proper. Bin Laden often has been shown gesturing with his right hand.

He appeared more tired than he did in an earlier tape that the Pentagon says was found in Afghanistan and dated Nov. 9. That video showed a relaxed, unscripted bin Laden is shown telling a visitor details of the Sept. 11 attacks and indicating he was involved in their planning. U.S. officials who said that tape was a virtual confession released it Dec. 13 and it was shown around the world.

But some in the Arab world, where bin Laden has struck a chord with his denunciations of the United States for its support of Israel and its alleged enmity toward Islam, thought that tape a hoax.

In Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan dismissed the latest tape as "nothing more than the same kind of terrorist propaganda we've heard before." He said he did not know whether government analysts had determined when the tape was made, or whether it indicates bin Laden is injured.

In the tape, bin Laden said the U.S.-led bombardment of Afghanistan shows that the West and the United States have an "indescribable hatred of Islam."

"The people who have lived the last months under the continual American air strikes, they know that very well. Many villages were wiped out for no crime and many millions were displaced in this cold weather."

He likened the bombing to terrorism.

"In Nairobi, when the boys -- may God take them as martyrs -- used a 2,000-kilo (4,400-pound) bomb, the U.S. said this was terrorism, that this was a weapon of mass destruction. And now the U.S. is using two bombs, each weighing 7,000 kilos (15,500 pounds). No one is questioning this."

The United States has indicted bin Laden in the 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2001

The part about his beard having gone mostly white, that's what occurred to me when I saw a picture on the news this morning. Isn't that another clue? Doesn't it take a while to grow out that way?

-- Anonymous, December 27, 2001