Bin Laden: another coded message - 5 November, 2001 - News

Bin Laden attacks the United Nations Organization in his latest appearance on Al-Jazeera. The next target is identified: next week’s UNO General Assembly meeting in New York.

Before previous Al Qaeda attacks, Osama Bin Laden has appeared on Al-Jazeera, the Qatar-based TV station, defining the target and forecasting the attack. Such was the case before the attack on a US military Headquarters in Saudi Arabia, the bombings of the US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, the attack of the USS Cole in Aden and the 11th September attacks in New York and Washington.

The United Nations General Assembly is scheduled to meet this week in New York, a fact which was central to the theme of Bin Laden’s declarations on Al-Jazeera. He attacked the United Nations Organization, calling it an instrument of crime against Moslems and considering the Arab leaders which collaborate with the UNO as “infidels who renounced the Qu’ran and the teachings of the Prophet Mohammed”.

“Those who try to solve their problems in the UNO are hypocrites, our suffering is caused by the organization”, he declared. “Who determined the division of Palestine in 1947? The United Nations”. He added that “We are massacred every day and the United Nations does not lift a finger”.

In his blistering attack on the UNO, Bin laden cites examples of the suffering of Moslems, in Kashmir, in the Middle east and called the action of this organization in East Timor “criminal”. It will be remembered that the United Nations, under the able management of administrator Sergio Vieira de Mello, engineered the peaceful transition of Timor Loro Sae to its independence, saving the 600,000 population from being massacred by Indonesian forces, the majority of whom are Moslems. These forces indeed hacked to death with machetes a group of 200 people, mainly women and children, including many nuns, inside a catholic church in the south of the country.

Bin Laden accused “all the west, with few exceptions” of supporting the United States in its “unjustified” campaign against “the people of Afghanistan”, declaring that there was no connection between Afghanistan and the September 11th attacks. “The Afghan people have nothing to do with this, but the campaign continues, exterminating villagers and civilians, women, children and innocent people, without any right”.

The United States has declared this latest broadcast to be a “serious mistake” in Bin Laden’s strategy, claiming that he has managed to alienate all moderate Arabs from Egypt to Indonesia. Claiming that Arab leaders who negotiate with the UNO are traitors to the faith, Bin Laden is classifying most of the Moslem world as infidels, including Iraq, which uses the UNO correctly to resolve its conflicts.

Timothy BANCROFT-HINCHEY PRAVDA.Ru