US giving impetus to India's N-plans: Zawahiri

PARIS: Al Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri has lashed out at United States President George W Bush, accusing him of giving a "strong impetus" to India's nuclear
programme while "doling out orders" to Pakistan.
     
In a video released on a Jihadist website, Zawahiri pointed to a visit by Bush in March to New Delhi during which he signed a nuclear cooperation agreement with India.
    
"He gives a strong impetus to the Indian nuclear programme, while doling out orders to Pakistan," Zawahiri said on Friday.
    
He lashed out at Pakistan President Pervez Musharraf, for his support to the US-led war on terror. "Musharraf is fighting Islam in Pakistan ...threatens national security in Pakistan... has placed Pakistan's nuclear programme under American, therefore Jewish and Indian control."
    
"I call on the people of Pakistan to work to remove this traitor from power... and I call on every officer and soldier in the Pakistani army to disobey their commanders' orders to kill Muslims in Pakistan and Afghanistan," Zawahiri said.

 

In the third message from the organisation in a week, Zawahiri said, "Musharraf was prepared to flee abroad where he had bank accounts when the popular revolution breaks out."
    
According to the video the "message to the people of Pakistan" was recorded after the third anniversary of the fall of the regime of former Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein on April 9, 2003.

 

The video followed an audiotape broadcast on Al Jazeera television last Sunday in which Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden called on Muslim fighters to go to Sudan to wage war against "crusader thieves" and slammed the international isolation of the Hamas-led Palestinian government.
    
The tape was the first from bin Laden since January 19.

 

Zawahiri lashed out in his message at the United States, Britain, and the governments of Iraq, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Egypt.
    
"Three years after the invasion of Iraq by the crusaders, America, Britain and their allies have only registered losses, catastrophes and misfortunes," Zawahiri said.

 

"Al Qaeda in (Iraq) alone has carried out 800 suicide operations in three years," Zawahiri said.
    
In a separate video broadcast on the internet on Saturday, an Al Qaeda member called on Afghan Arabs who had fought Soviet forces in Afghanistan to join up with bin Laden to take on US forces there.
    
"I call on the fighters who fought the Russians on this sacred ground to return to the country and to join up with Sheikh Osama bin Laden and their brothers," Saudi Mohammad al-Qahtani said in the video statement released on the Internet.

 

Qahtani was one of four Al Qaeda members who escaped from the US Bagram airbase in Afghanistan last July.
    
The escape of the four men, described by the US army as "dangerous combatants", is a source of embarrassment at the main US base in Afghanistan.