By Heba Saleh in Cairo
Published: April 15 2002 18:26 | Last Updated: April 16 2002 17:24


The respected pan-Arab daily newspaper Al-Hayat has published what it describes as excerpts from a statement from Mullah Mohammed Omar, the leader of the former Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

If the statement is authentic then Mullah Omar has chosen to break his silence at a highly emotional moment in the Middle East with rousing comments accusing Israel and the US of waging a losing war against Islam.

"The war against Islam and Muslims is a flagrant crusader war - the Jews and the Americans are one army on one mission in their war against us, and are co-operating openly to implement it," said the statement attributed to Mr Omar.

It accuses the Islamic world of having made possible Israel's offensive against the Palestinians when many Muslim countries supported the US in "its war against Islam in Afghanistan carried out under the name of a war against terrorism".

The statement attributed to the former Taliban leader also calls on the Palestinians to be patient and tells them that "our American and Jewish enemies will lose at the end of the battle".

Mr Omar would appear to be trying to play to an Arab and Islamic gallery outraged by daily televised images of Palestinian suffering. The reclusive Afghan leader never had much of a constituency in the Arab world, and it is unlikely his words would have much of impact.

Yet the timing of the release of the statement seems significant because it coincides with the screening of a video tape on the Qatar-based al-Jazeera television showing one of the purported suicide hijackers who carried out the September 11 attacks delivering his last will and threatening to kill Americans in "their own turf".

The video shows a man identified by al-Jazeera as suicide bomber Ahmad Al Haznawi Al Ghamdi with his head wrapped in a black and white Palestinian headscarf against a picture of a tall building bursting into flames. According to al-Jazeera, Al Ghamdi was filmed six months before the September attacks.

Al-Jazeera also broadcast footage which it said came on the same video cassette showing al-Qaeda's number two Ayman El Zawahri sitting outdoors next to Osama bin Laden. Mr Zawahri speaks, describing the September 11 attacks as a victory achieved not through the group's own "skills", but with the help of God.

http://news.ft.com/ft/gx.cgi/ftc?pagename=View&c=Article&cid=FT3Z6F4L20D
&live=true&tagid=ZZZC19QUA0C&subheading=asia%20pacific