Tape said to feature bin Laden praising Bali, Moscow attacks

CAIRO, Egypt -- In an audiotaped message aired across the Arab world Tuesday, a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden praised terrorist strikes in Bali and Moscow in a message that clearly warned U.S. allies against following the United States in the war on terror.

In Washington, a U.S. official said the voice sounds like Osama bin Laden, as the Bush administration tried to authenticate what would be the first hard evidence in a year that the al-Qaida leader was still alive.

In a rambling statement, the speaker on the tape broadcast on Al-Jazeera television referred to recent attacks, including the Oct. 12 Bali bombings "that killed the British and Australians," the killing last month of a Marine in Kuwait, the bombing of a French oil tanker last month off Yemen and "Moscow's latest operation," -- a hostage-taking by Chechen rebels.

Speaking in a literary style of Arabic favored by bin Laden, he said the attacks were "undertaken by sons who are zealous in the defense of their religion," and that they were "only a reaction in response to what President Bush, the pharaoh of the age, is doing by killing our sons in Iraq and what America's ally Israel is doing, bombarding houses with women and old people and children inside with American planes."

Al-Jazeera identified the speaker as Osama bin Laden and said they received the tape on Tuesday. The audiotape was aired alongside an old photograph of the al-Qaida leader but there was no new video of him.

Warnings to U.S. allies

The speaker then castigated U.S. allies that have joined the war against terrorism, specifically Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia.

After listing those countries, he warned: "If you don't like looking at your dead ... so remember our dead, including the children in Iraq."

"What business do your governments have to ally themselves with the gang of criminality in the White House against Muslims? Don't your governments know that the White House gang is the biggest serial killers in this age?"

In Washington, intelligence officials were evaluating the tape.

"It does sound like bin Laden's voice," said a U.S. official, speaking on condition of anonymity. " We have to complete the technical analysis," the official said.

American officials have not verified bin Laden's whereabouts this year. The last certain evidence bin Laden was alive was a videotape of him having dinner with some of his deputies, which is believed to have been filmed on Nov. 9, 2001.

Audio recordings are easier to make than videotapes which could reveal whether bin Laden is injured, has significantly altered his looks, or is in a vulnerable location.