Cairo (Egypt): Al-Qaeda on Thursday announced that Osama bin Laden will release a new video soon declaring war on Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf.
The announcement of the upcoming video came as al-Qaeda released a new video in which bin Laden's deputy, Ayman al-Zawahri, boasted that the US was being defeated in Afghanistan, Iraq and other fronts.
The messages are part of a stepped-up propaganda campaign by al-Qaeda around the anniversary of the September 11, 2001 attacks against the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. Earlier this month, bin Laden released two messages - including his first new appearance in a video in nearly three years.
''Urgent, al-Qaeda declares war on the tyrant Pervez Musharraf and his apostate army, in the words of Osama bin Laden,'' the website read.
Such advertisements usually precede the release of the video by one to three days, according to IntelCenter, a US counterterrorism group that monitors militant messages.
The sophisticated 80-minute video released Thursday on the same Web site was in the style of a documentary, intersplicing the speech by al-Zawahri with footage from the 9-11 attacks, interviews with experts and officials taken from Western and Arab television stations and old footage and audiotapes of bin Laden.
Al-Zawahri began by condemning the Pakistani military's July assault on Islamic militants who took over the Red Mosque in Islamabad, and he paid tribute to one of the militants' leaders, Abdul Rashid Ghazi, who was killed in the fighting.
The siege ''revealed the extent of the despicableness, lowliness and treason of Musharraf and his forces, who don't deserve the honor of defending Pakistan, because Pakistan is a Muslim land, whereas the forces of Musharraf are hunting dogs under US President George W Bush's crucifix,'' al-Zawahri said.
''Let the Pakistani army know that the killing of Abdul Rashid Ghazi and his male and female students ... has soaked the history of the Pakistan army in shame and despicableness which can only washed away by retaliation,'' he said.
Bin Laden and al-Zawahri are thought to be hiding in the lawless Pakistan-Afghanistan border region, where many analysts believe they have rebuilt al-Qaeda's core leadership.
Al-Zawahri called on supporters in North Africa to ''cleanse the Maghrib (western region) of Islam of the children of France and Spain ... Stand with your sons the mujahideen against the Crusaders and their children.''
The video also included what IntelCenter said appeared to be old, but previously unreleased footage of bin Laden. The images show the terror leader, with a beard streaked with gray and a a white cloth draped over his head, in front of a map showing the Middle East and South and Central Asia.
He points to the map with a stick and addresses an unseen audience.
He condemns Arab Gulf governments that have allied themselves with the US, saying they have ''sold the Islamic nation, colluded with the enemies of Islam and backed the infidels. And this is the greater form of being an infidel ...But Allah permitting, they shall leave the Gulf under the blows of the mujahideen,'' Bin Laden said.
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