Elusive Osama bin Laden is on TV again

The new video tape with Osama bin Laden’s statement, which was shown on Al-Jazeera channel, was a surprise for George Bush’s administration. This was said by The Washington Post newspaper on Thursday with reference to the official representatives of the administration.

As the administration informed, the tape showed that the record had been made somewhere between the first, or the second week of December, when the Talibs started fleeing from Kandahar, and when the USA started bombing the mountainous Tora Bora district on the outskirts of Jelalabad.

Ibrahim Hilal, Al-Jazeera chief editor said in his interview to Associated Press news agency that Al-Jazeera received the tape a couple of days ago by airmail from Pakistan. It was not known, who sent it. Bin Laden said on the tape that the terror attack of September 11, which killed about three thousand people, had the objective to stop the USA’s support to Israel. Bin Laden condemned the Western countries for the mass bombing of the Muslims in Afghanistan, emphasizing the air raid during the prayers several weeks ago.

“The latest events demonstrated important things, - Bin Laden said. It became known that the West on the whole, as well as America in particular, experienced incredible hatred to Islam.”

Washington considered Bin Laden’s television address to be another terrorism and violence propaganda; it was added there would be no effect from that. Some experts believe, however, that the fact of appearance of terrorist number one on television could encourage the Islamic radicals, taking account of the fact that the American troops have not yet had any success in searching for Bin Laden.

Dmitry Litvinovich PRAVDA.Ru

Translated by Dmitry Sudakov