West is on crusade - 'Bin Laden'
Osama Bin Laden
If confirmed it will be Bin Laden's first message since January
The West's moves to isolate the new Hamas-led Palestinian government prove it is at war with Islam, a tape attributed to Osama Bin Laden declares.
The tape also described the situation in Iraq and Sudan's troubled Darfur region as further evidence that a "Zionist-crusader war" was being waged.
The recording was broadcast by Arab satellite TV al-Jazeera on Sunday.
If confirmed, it is the first message from Bin Laden since January 2006, when he threatened more attacks on the US.
Public responsibility
The authenticity of the tape has yet to be independently verified.
The speaker on the tape said that along with their governments, the people of the West bear responsibility for what he called a "Zionist-crusader war against Islam".
The war is a responsibility shared between the people and the governments. The war goes on and the people are renewing their allegiance to its rulers and masters," he said.
"They send their sons to armies to fight us and they continue their financial and moral support while our countries are burned and our houses are bombed and our people are killed."
He said that the decision by some Western powers to cut funding to the Palestinian government since the militant group Hamas won elections there was further proof of this anti-Islamic campaign.
"The blockade which the West is imposing on the government of Hamas proves that there is a Zionist-crusader war on Islam," the tape said.
Hunt in borderlands
The speaker also criticised Western involvement in the troubled Darfur region of Sudan saying it was part of the "crusades against Islam" and called for militants to journey there to join the fight.
"I call on mujahideen and their supporters, especially in Sudan and the Arab peninsula, to prepare for long war again the crusader plunderers in Western Sudan," the voice said. "Our goal is not defending the Khartoum government but to defend Islam, its land and its people."
Bin Laden was based in Sudan until he was expelled following US pressure on Khartoum.
He then moved to Afghanistan and is now believed to be hiding in the mountains on the Pakistani side of their shared border.
But successive operations involving coalition troops inside Afghanistan and Pakistani forces along their side of the border have so far failed to track down the al-Qaeda leader.
West is on crusade - 'Bin Laden' 
Linear Mode
