DUBAI (AFP) - Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden warned US president-elect Barack Obama of new fronts in his holy war against Western interests in a new voice recording posted on Wednesday less than a week before the new administration takes office.
Bin Laden called on Muslims across the world to take revenge against Israel for its deadly offensive against Gaza, charging that the onslaught had been timed to take advantage of the dying days of the presidency of George W. Bush.
The 22-minute audio recording, which the US-based Site Intelligence Group said it believes is authentic, was the first commentary from the Al-Qaeda leader in eight months.
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It came as Bush, whose presidency was dominated by the September 11, 2001 attacks that Bin Laden's militants launched against the United States, prepares to leave office on January 20.
The Al-Qaeda leader crowed at the legacy that Bush was leaving his successor.
"Indicators suggest... that 75 percent of the American people are pleased with the departure of the president who bogged them down in wars that they have nothing to do with," Bin Laden said.
"He drowned them in economic turmoil that reached their ears. He passed a heavy legacy to his successor."
Bin Laden said that Obama was already facing difficult choices in the face of two losing campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"It is most difficult for a man to inherit the legacy of a long guerrilla warfare with a patient and stubborn adversary, a war which is financed by usurious loans.
"If he withdraws from the war, it is military defeat. And if he continues it, he drowns in economic crisis.
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"How can it be that he passed over to him two wars, not one war, and he is unable to continue them. We are on our path to open other fronts, with God's blessing."
Bin Laden listed Palestine, the Pakistani province of Waziristan, North Africa and Somalia as among the new battlefields where his fighters would take on the West.
The Al-Qaeda leader slammed Arab governments for their inaction in the face of the Israeli onslaught against Gaza, now in its 19th day, accusing them of behaving like the puppet administrations established by the colonial powers in the Middle East between the wars.
He said Israel launched the offensive for fear that the power of its US ally would swiftly wane leaving it vulnerable.
"You know that the first loser from the waning of American injustice is the Zionist entity, which thereby loses one of the most important pillars of its survival and arteries of its life," he said.
"This horrible and rapid waning of American power is one of the important motives for the Israelis in this cruel attack on Gaza, in a desperate attempt to benefit from the final days of the two terms of President Bush and the neoconservatives."
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He said there was no remedy to be secured from the UN Security Council for the people of Gaza and called on Muslims worldwide to launch a global jihad or holy war.
"The duty is to incite to individual jihad and to recruit youth into the brigades for jihad in the cause of Allah against the Zionist-Crusader (Israeli-Western) alliance and its agents in the region."
It was Bin Laden's first message since May last year and, if SITE's authentication proves correct, the first proof that the Al-Qaeda leader has lived on to see out the presidency of his archfoe Bush.
White House officials declined to give an immediate view on the genuineness of the new statement from a man who carries a 25 million dollar US bounty on his head.
They sought to play down the continuing influence of the Al-Qaeda leader widely believed to have found refuge in Pakistan's largely lawless tribal areas on the border with Afghanistan.
"It appears this tape demonstrates his isolation and continued attempts to remain relevant at a time when Al-Qaeda's ideology, mission, and agenda are being questioned and challenged throughout the world," said White House spokesman Gordon Johndroe.
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However a US counter-terrorism official, who requested anonymity, told AFP: "There is no reason to doubt that he (Bin Laden) is alive and that he does play a role in directing Al-Qaeda efforts, particularly at a strategic level."
