Zarqawi gets bin Laden blessing

2004-12-27 20:16

Cairo - In an audiotape broadcast on Monday by Al-Jazeera satellite television, a man purported to be Osama bin Laden endorsed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as his deputy in Iraq and called for a boycott of next month's elections there.

The voice on the tape described al-Zarqawi as the "emir" of al-Qaeda in Iraq and called upon Muslims there "to listen to him."

Speaking of a statement last month in which al-Zarqawi declared allegiance to bin Laden and changed his group's name to al-Qaeda in Iraq, the voice on the tape called it "a great step on the path of unifying all the mujahedeen in establishing the state of righteousness and ending the state of injustice".

The voice sounded like bin Laden, but there was no way to independently confirm who the speaker was.

Al-Jazeera broadcast excerpts of the tape while showing a still photo of bin Laden.

Al-Zarqawi's group is responsible for numerous car bombings and beheadings of foreign hostages in Iraq.

This was the second tape by bin Laden to surface this month.

An audiotape posted on an Islamic website on December 16 had a man identified as Osama bin Laden praising militants who attacked a US consulate in Saudi Arabia earlier this month and calling on militants to stop the flow of oil to the West.

Bin Laden, believed hiding in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, before that reached out to his followers in October, with a videotape aired on Al-Jazeera just before the US presidential elections.

In that statement, he for the first time clearly took responsibility for the September 11 attacks on the US and said America could avoid another such strike if it stopped threatening the security of Muslims.

- AP