Latest recording bids to exploit anger over floods

AL-QAIDA leader Osama bin Laden sought to drum up support by taking advantage of Pakistan’s flood tragedy with a new audiotape released yesterday criticising Muslim governments for their slow response and calling for the creation of a new relief body to aid Muslims.

It was the third message in recent weeks from al-Qaida figures concerning the massive August floods that displaced eight million people in Pakistan, signalling a concentrated campaign by the terror group to exploit public discontent and present itself as protectors of the poor.

“What governments spend on relief work is secondary to what it spends on its armies,” bin Laden says on the 11-minute tape called Reflections on the Method of Relief Work. The authenticity of the tape could not be immediately verified.