DUBAI, Dec 16 (AFP) - Osama bin Laden called on his fighters Thursday to strike Gulf oil supplies and warned Saudi leaders they risked a popular uprising in an audio message said to be by the Western world's most wanted terror mastermind.
Washington said intelligence analysts were not immediately able to verify the authenticity of the recording posted on an Islamist website but the White House was quick to voice defiance.
"Take jihad (holy war) to stop (the Americans) getting hold of (the oil). Concentrate your operations on the oil, in particular in Iraq and the Gulf," said the voice attributed to the Al-Qaeda leader.
The lengthy message also warned Riyadh's rulers that "the people have woken" and laid the blame for deadly unrest gripping the country on the kingdom's own regime.
"Muslims are determined to recover their rights whatever the price. Either you give them back what they entrusted you with (power), by allowing them to choose their rulers, or you refuse to give power back to them."
The voice accused the regime in the ultra-conservative kingdom, which is battling a wave of Islamist attacks, of forging an alliance with the "infidel" world led by US President George W. Bush.
White House spokesman Scott McClellan said analysts were still checking on the tape's authenticity but vowed that there would be no let-up in the administration's fight against Islamic militancy.
"We are a nation at war on terrorism," McClellan told reporters.
"We have made significant progress but the war continues. The terrorists will be defeated, and the civilized world will prevail."
It was the first purported statement from the Al-Qaeda leader, who has a 25-million-dollar US bounty on his head, since a videotape broadcast on October 29 in which he threatened new attacks on the United States.
Since May last year, Saudi Arabia has been battling a wave of deadly attacks in the ultra-conservative kingdom which have been blamed on bin Laden symapthisers.
In the latest attack claimed by Al-Qaeda, the US consulate in the commerical capital of Jeddah was stormed by gunmen on December 6, killing five non-American staff members and four of the attackers.
The voice on the tape paid tribute to the attackers.
"The responsibility for the current situation in Saudi Arabia rests with the regime," it said in a message which in particular took to task the kingdom's de facto leader Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz.
"In Saudi Arabia, it is the king and not Allah who commands sovereignty and complete obedience," the voice said. "I advised the government two decades ago to remedy the situation... but it has not changed at all."
The tape emerged as Saudi security services were deployed in force to block protests called for by a dissident Islamist group seeking regime change in the oil-rich kingdom.
"When people move to ask for their rights, security forces cannot stop them," said the tape, which also denounced what it said was American meddling in the affairs of Islamic nations.
"The government in Saudi Arabia has been the target of American interference," even in the school curriculum, it said. "The Saudi government has forged an alliance with the world of infidelity led by Bush."
The voice also hurled back the "deviant" term used by Saudi authorities to refer to Islamist militants.
"Who are the supporters of the deviant thinking? Are they the mujahedeen or the accomplices of America in the killing of more than one million children (in Iraq)?"
In a series of interviews earlier this month, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf said bin Laden's trail had gone cold, and that US and Pakistani officials had no active leads on where he might be hiding.
12/16/2004 16:46 GMT - AFP