Last month's Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md., was denounced Friday as a "betrayal" of the Palestinians in a new audio message attributed to al-Qaeda's deputy leader.
Al-Qaeda deputy leader Ayman al-Zawahri appears in this image taken from a video posted Friday on an Islamic militant website.
(IntelCenter/Associated Press)
"The Annapolis meeting was held to turn Palestine into a Jewish state," said the voice on the audiotape, purported to be that of Ayman al-Zawahri.
His words were contained in a 20-minute posting on a militant Islamic website that also carried a still photo of the white-turbaned al-Zawahri militant against a backdrop of a photograph from the conference.
It was the first reaction by al-Qaeda to the Mideast conference, sponsored by U.S. President George W. Bush and attended by key Arab countries, including Saudi Arabia, Syria and Egypt, as well as Palestinian and Israeli leaders.
The conference relaunched Palestinian-Israeli peace talks after a seven-year hiatus — a key breakthrough in the region's core conflict.
"The czar of Washington invited 16 Arab countries … to sit in one room, at one table with the Israelis," the voice on the tape said, adding that the conference "witnessed the betrayal deals to sell Palestine."
The authenticity of the Friday's posting could not be independently confirmed, but it appeared on a website commonly used by al-Qaeda.
The speaker mainly addressed Arabs, urging them to condemn the Annapolis conference and label Mahmoud Abbas as "the traitor," adding that the Palestinian "brother-president sold you out in Annapolis and in its aftermath."
It's time now, he said, for the Muslims to "extend hands to other jihad brothers" — a likely reference to militants beyond the Middle East.
"My brothers in Palestine, we, all Muslims, the Mujahedeen are by your side, in your confrontation with the Zionist enemy," the tape said. "We will not let you down even if your politicians do."
'Revisionists' criticized
He also criticized imprisoned Islamic militants in Egypt, who after years in jail turned away from their militant stance. "Those revisionists are, in fact, calling for a new American religion that violates God's rules," he said.
A top jailed Jihad leader, Sayed Imam, last month announced his "Revisions" — a recanting of his past calls for the use of force to overthrow Arab governments seen by militants as infidels.
Egypt is hoping the "Revisions" will diminish support for militancy but al-Qaeda leaders have dismissed similar past recantations as forced on imprisoned militants.
"I am addressing the Muslim nation in Egypt in particular: where is your role in confronting aggression on Islam and Muslims?" said the tape. "Stand up and … be aware of the poisons of weakness and submission which the traitor regime is trying to inject into you through the tongues of the revisionists."
He called on Egyptian soldiers and also Bedouin tribes in Egypt's Sinai peninsula to rise against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak.
"God wants you to get ready, for the sake of God," the tape said.
Al-Zawahri — seen by many counter-terrorism experts to be al-Qaeda's operational chief, rather than bin Laden — is believed to play a large role in directing al-Qaeda's strategy on the ground and issues frequent videos an audiotapes, often laying out the network's doctrinal line.
In most recent postings, al-Zawahri sought to galvanize fighters from North Africa to Afghanistan in a September video.
In an audiotape in July, he threatened to retaliate against Britain for having honoured novelist Salman Rushdie and railed against Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.
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