US experts who have analysed an audio tape urging Iraqis to carry out suicide attacks against Americans, say they believe the voice is that of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
But the Iraqis have said the US is attempting to use the tape as a pretext for war after American officials said the tape proved the world must fear Saddam Hussein's ties to the al Qaeda terror network.
The appeal was made in a voice tape aired yesterday by the Al-Jazeera satellite television station throughout the Arab world. It was broadcast as US officials warned of devastating attacks within the United States and the Persian Gulf, where US forces are massing for a likely attack against Iraq.
"This nexus between terrorists and states that are developing weapons of mass destruction can no longer be looked away from and ignored," US Secretary of State Colin Powell told the Senate Budget Committee in Washington.
US officials are trying to link Al Qaeda to Iraq, despite the speaker on the tape referring to Saddam Hussein and his associates as "infidels".
Baghdad's view is that the tape is a call to all Muslims and is an attempt to undermine rather than boost Saddam's secular regime.
"The desperate bid by the US administration to establish a connection between Iraq and Al Qaeda is part of a policy to find an excuse to launch an offensive against Iraq," Mr Salem al-Qubaissi, head of an Iraqi parliamentary committee on international affairs, said.
Some Middle East experts have questioned ties between bin Laden's Islamic extremists and Saddam's government, which nominally adheres to a Pan-Arabic socialistic doctrine called Ba'athism.
On the tape, however, the speaker said it was acceptable for Muslims to fight on behalf of Iraqi "socialists" because "in these circumstances" their interests "intersect in fighting against the Crusaders".
On the tape, broadcast on the first day of the Muslim holiday Eid al-Adha, the speaker advised Iraqis how to fight the Americans, based on al Qaeda's experience in Afghanistan.
"We stress the importance of martyrdom operations against the enemy, these attacks that have scared Americans and Israelis like never before," the man identified as bin Laden said.
"We advise about the importance of drawing the enemy into long, close and exhausting fighting, taking advantage of camouflaged positions in plains, farms, mountains and cities," he said.
AFP & AP