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Zarqawi threats 'serious'
26/04/2006 14:21 - (SA)
Baghdad - Iraqi citizens and politicians condemned terror mastermind Abu Musab al-Zarqawi on Wednesday as a foreigner determined to destroy their country, but they also seemed to take his new video promising more attacks as a serious threat.
Jamal Salman, 40, a minority Sunni Arab who lived in eastern Baghdad, said: "I think this time al-Zarqawi is very serious. He was speaking at a time of serious terrorist attacks, not only in Iraq, but in other Arab countries such as Afghanistan and Egypt."
Salman, who worked for Iraq's oil ministry, also said that United States defense secretary Donald H Rumsfeld's unexpected visit to Iraq on Wednesday to support the country's new government might indicate that he, too, knew "how serious everyone takes Zarqawi's threats".
'More attacks may come'
Al-Zarqawi, a Jordanian-born Sunni, made a dramatic and unprecedented appearance on the video on Tuesday, dismissing the new Iraqi government as an American "stooge" and a "poisoned dagger" in the heart of the Muslim world. He also warned of more attacks to come.
He addressed Sunnis in Iraq and across the Arab world, warning that their community was in danger of being caught between "the crusaders and the evil rejectionists", the terms used by radical Sunnis for the Americans and Iraq's majority Shi'ites.
The video - the first released by al-Zarqawi showing his face - was posted on the internet only days after a breakthrough in Iraq's political process allowing its Shi'ite, Sunni and Kurdish leaders to start putting together a government.
War on Islam
It also came only two days after al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden, to whom al-Zarqawi had sworn allegiance, released an audiotape calling on Muslims to resist what he called the West's war on Islam.
The message appeared to be an attempt by al-Zarqawi, the head of al-Qaeda in Iraq, to rally Iraqis and foreign fighters to his side and showed his strength at a time when US and Iraqi officials were touting political progress as a setback to insurgents.
Al-Zarqawi had claimed responsibility for some of the bloodiest suicide bombings in Iraq since the 2003 fall of Saddam Hussein and for the beheadings and killings of at least 10 foreign hostages, including three Americans and a Briton.
Kurds to unite against terrorism
Arab television network aired portions of the tape at the same time that Iraq's government-owned TV showed an interview with the new prime minister-designate Jawad al-Maliki.
Al-Maliki called for Iraq's sharply divided Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds to unite against terrorism.
He said: "If we can reach unity between all the components of the people, the canals of terrorism will dry up."
The video, which al-Zarqawi said was filmed on Friday, threw the militant leader back into the public spotlight, after months of taking a lower profile amid criticism of bombings against civilians. It was his first message since January.
- AP
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