New Delhi: Osama Bin Laden has spoken after two years of silence.
In the latest tapes, Bin Laden has vowed not to be captured alive. Broadcast before the new images from Abu Ghraib were released, Bin Laden claims the insurgency in Iraq is gaining strength.
He says the US is as criminally culpable as Saddam Hussein. He also warns of an American plot to bomb al-Jazeera headquarters in Qatar, though he maintains that the news agency is an American 'instrument'.
Laden says he was inspired to speak by the increasing demand of the American public to pull troops out of Iraq. The audio tape was first released on the Internet in January, but has only just been authenticated by US Intelligence.
The tape appeared to be a complete version of one that was first broadcast January 19 on Al-Jazeera, the pan-Arab satellite channel, in which Laden offered the United States a long-term truce, but also said his al-Qaida terror network would soon launch a fresh attack on American soil.
"I have sworn to only live free. Even if I find bitter the taste of death, I don't want to die humiliated or deceived," bin Laden said, in the 11 minute 26 second tape.
In drawing the comparison to American military behaviour in Iraq to that of Saddam, the speaker said: "The jihad is continuing with strength. Despite all the barbarity, the repressive steps taken by the American Army and its agents, to the extent that there is no longer any mentionable difference between this criminality and the criminality of Saddam."
Laden also denied Bush administration assertions that it was better to fight terrorists in Iraq than on US soil.
"The war against America and its allies has not remained confined to Iraq as he (Bush) claims, but rather Iraq has become a point of attraction and recruitment of qualified
forces," the speaker said.
In the full tape that was posted on Monday, Laden engaged in renewed propaganda, mocking US President George W Bush's aircraft carrier declaration in April 2003 that major conflict
in Iraq had ended.
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