- WASHINGTON (AFP) - US Homeland
Security chief Tom Ridge indirectly confirmed the authenticity of an audiotape
attributed to al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden.
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- "We are at condition yellow, we are at an elevated
level of risk," Ridge said Thursday, referring to his office's color-coded
threat assessment scale.
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- "We need no reminder of that than more recently
than bin Laden's own remarks of 24 or 48 hours ago," he said.
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- Ridge's remarks, to an audience of US business executives
at the State Department, are the strongest public indication yet from a
US official that Washington has determined the voice on the tape to be
that of bin Laden.
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- Privately, officials have said they believe the tape
is genuine and earlier Thursday, Australian Prime Minister John Howard
said US intelligence agencies had confirmed that the voice is bin Laden.
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- But there has been no official confirmation of its authenticity
from Washington.
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- In the tape, aired this week by the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera
television network, the speaker purported to be bin Laden hailed a recent
series of attacks in the Middle East, Russia and Southeast Asia and threatened
more attacks against the United States and its allies.
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- If the tape is authentic, it would be the first solid
evidence that bin Laden, blamed for organizing the September 11, 2001 terrorist
attacks on the United States, had survived the year-old US-led military
campaign against his bases in Afghanistan.
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- In it, the speaker refers to a Moscow hostage-taking
in late October, the October 28 killing of a US diplomat in Jordan and
a nightclub bombing earlier last month on the Indonesian resort island
of Bali.
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- On Wednesday, US President George W. Bush said the United
States took the threats seriously whether they came from bin Laden or not
and that experts had not finished their analysis of the tape.
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- "Whoever put this tape out has put the world on
notice yet again that we're at war and that we need to take these messages
very seriously, and we will," Bush said.
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- "We'll take them seriously abroad by continuing
our hunt," he said. "We'll chase these people down one at a time.
It doesn't matter how long it takes, we'll find them and bring them to
justice."
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- Copyright © 2001 AFP
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