CAIRO, Egypt – A man identified as Osama bin Laden, speaking on an audiotape posted on an Islamic Web site Thursday, praised the men who attacked a U.S. consulate in Saudi Arabia earlier this month and called on militants to stop the flow of oil to the West.
The voice sounded like the al-Qaida terror chief’s, and the tape, which was more than an hour, was posted on a site known as a clearinghouse for militant Islamic comment. The identity of the voice, however, could not be independently confirmed.
In Washington, Secretary of State Colin Powell said U.S. intelligence officials were analyzing the tape, and “it appears to be” the voice of bin Laden.
The State Department said later Thursday that it did not have an official transcript of the tape, but “the intelligence community has assessed with high confidence that the voice is that of bin Laden.”
The speaker urged Islamic militants to stop Westerners from obtaining Middle Eastern oil, saying such a blow would be fatal to the West.
“Try your best to stop the biggest theft in history,” the speaker said, accusing the West of buying oil too cheaply.
The speaker noted that the world price of oil had fallen several times while the cost of other commodities had doubled. “Today its price should be at least $100” a barrel, the speaker said.
“Go on and try to prevent them (Westerners) from getting oil,” the speaker told militants. “Concentrate your operations on that, especially in Iraq and the Gulf.”
The speaker did not give specific targets, but it was believed to be the first time a purported bin Laden tape effectively called for attacks on the oil industry. Bin Laden previously has said oil should not be targeted as it was a resource that would be useful once al-Qaida establishes an Islamic state in the Arabian peninsula.
The tape’s reference to the Dec. 6 attack – in which five militants shot their way into the compound of the U.S. Consulate in Jiddah, Saudi Arabia, killing five non-American employees – showed that it was made recently. Four of the attackers were killed and one was wounded in the consulate attack.
Saudi Arabia cracked down on Muslim extremists after the May 2003 bombings of three residential compounds in Riyadh brought terrorism home to the kingdom, but has not been able to contain the violence.
Bin Laden, believed hiding in the mountains along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border, last reached out to his followers in October, with a videotape aired on the Arabic TV station Al-Jazeera just before the U.S. presidential elections. In that statement, he for the first time clearly took responsibility for the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States and said America could avoid another such strike if it stopped threatening the security of Muslims.
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