DUBAI/WASHINGTON, 12 February 2003 — An audio tape broadcast yesterday and said to be from Osama Bin Laden urged Muslims to fight America and Israel and repel any “war of infidels” against Iraq.

“We are following with great concern the preparations of the Crusaders to launch war on the former capital of Muslims and to install a puppet government,” said the statement, broadcast on the Al-Jazeera satellite television channel.

The statement said the attack on Iraq was being led by the United States to tip the regional balance of power in favor of Israel.

“Fight these despots. I remind you that victory comes only from God,” the audio statement said. The United States has accused Iraq of links with Al-Qaeda, a charge Iraqi President Saddam Hussein denied earlier this month.

Bin Laden warned Arab states against backing any US-led war on Iraq and said suicide attacks were important in fighting America.

“We stress the importance of martyrdom attacks against the enemy. These attacks inflicted on America and Israel a disaster they have never experienced before,” said the statement.

Bin Laden said it is acceptable for Muslims to find alongside the “socialist apostates” of Iraq’s ruling Baath party “against the Crusaders.”

The statement said any Arab ruler who supported America or provided logistical or verbal backing for the war on Iraq would be “an apostate whose blood should be spilled”.

The United States reacting to Bin Laden’s tape said it believed the tape was genuine and that his message of siding with Iraq may herald a “burgeoning alliance of terror.”

“At best, this is a terrorist making common cause with a brutal dictator, and at worst, this demonstrates a burgeoning alliance of terror,” said a senior administration official, who requested anonymity.

Meanwhile, US officials yesterday laid out plans for a two-year military occupation of Iraq in the event of an invasion and told wary senators that “enormous uncertainties” made it impossible to say whether troops might stay even longer or how much it would all cost.

Undersecretary of Defense Douglas Feith told the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that the military and civilian administrators after a US invasion would report to Gen. Tommy Franks, commander of US forces in the Middle East.

Pressed for an idea of how long a military occupation would last before Iraqis could take back the government of their country, his colleague from the State Department, Marc Grossman, said he would guess “two years.”

In other developments, a German government source said yesterday eleven of the 15 UN Security Council members supported extending arms inspections in Iraq and NATO ambassadors failed again to resolve a damaging crisis over Iraq.

The German source said the countries on the Security Council that did not support extending the arms inspections included the United States, Britain “in part”, Spain and Bulgaria.

“The others support the German position,” the source said in response to a question about whether Germany was isolated in wanting the weapons inspectors to be given more time to conduct their work.

In Brussels, alliance spokesman Yves Brodeur said NATO ambassadors failed again yesterday to resolve a damaging crisis over Iraq and will reconvene today.

In Washington, the US military said yesterday thousands of US troops began flying to the Gulf region yesterday on commercial airliners mobilized by the Pentagon to meet growing airlift needs for a possible war with Iraq.

In Ankara, Turkish leader Tayyip Erdogan was quoted yesterday as ruling out placing Turkish forces under US command for any war in neighboring Iraq, describing the very notion as a national insult.

While Turkey is edging toward allowing its NATO ally the United States to use the country as a launching pad for an attack on Iraq, it said it will not join the fighting and would only use its troops to prevent a humanitarian disaster and upheaval in northern Iraq. (Agencies)