UNITED NATIONS, 8 May 2004 — UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan said yesterday he would continue to get on with his work despite a price tag put on his head by terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden.
In a message distributed to websites popular with extremists, the Al-Qaeda leader offered 10 kilos of gold, worth about $125,000, for the assassination of Annan, his Iraq envoy Lakhdar Brahimi and the US overseer in Iraq, Paul Bremer.
“Obviously we take it seriously,” the UN chief told reporters here. “We will have to take precautions and then carry on with my life and work.”
Bin Laden’s message said the United Nations, which is working with the coalition in Iraq to set up a new government, was “a Crusader and Zionist instrument disguised behind some relief work.”
The audio recording attributed to Bin Laden was likely authentic, a CIA official in Washington said yesterday.
After conducting a technical analysis of the audio recording, the CIA official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the agency’s assessment is that “it is likely the voice of Bin Laden.”
“You know that America promised big rewards for those who kill mujahedeen (holy warriors),” the speaker said. “We in the Al-Qaeda organization will guarantee, God willing, 10,000 grams of gold to whoever kills the occupier Bremer, or the American chief commander or his deputy in Iraq.”
The United States has offered rewards of its own for information leading to the captures or deaths of Bin Laden and his top lieutenants, as well as for top figures in the former Iraqi government of Saddam Hussein. The price on Bin Laden’s head now stands at $50 million.
The speaker on the tape also promised a lesser prize — 1,000 grams of gold — to anyone killing a citizen of countries he called “the masters of the veto like Americans and Britons” — a reference to nations with veto power on the UN Security Council.
And he offered 500 grams of gold to anyone killing citizens of countries he called “slaves of the Security Council who are in Iraq, like Japan and Italy.”
