Pakistan derides latest Bin Laden threat

Osama bin Laden’s call for Pakistanis to rise up against their US-allied military leader struck a chord among an angry, extremist minority on Friday, but resonated little among the wider public and was dismissed by the government as “ridiculous.”

The al Qaida chief’s audio message, released yesterday, urged Pakistanis to wage a jihad or holy war against President Gen Pervez Musharraf, whose decision to send troops into a pro-Taliban mosque in the capital and against Islamic militants at the Afghan border has stoked an insurgency.

Today, the general’s representatives dismissed the idea that many in Pakistan’s overwhelmingly Muslim population of 160 million would respond to the latest call to arms.

“If Osama bin Laden has spoken to the people and urged them to rise, and the people were really following him, they would have done so much earlier,” said army spokesman Maj Gen Waheed Arshad. “He doesn’t have much following here.”

Presidential spokesman Rashid Qureshi said the government wanted to avoid giving bin Laden any more publicity. “I think a response to such ridiculous rhetoric is just dignifying it. We don’t want to do that.”

But a Pakistani intelligence official said that authorities had to take the statement seriously because a similar message from al-Qaida No. 2 Ayman al-Zawahri preceded twin attempts on Musharraf’s life in December 2003.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, wouldn’t discuss whether the security ring around Musharraf would be tightened further.

Bin Laden’s message was the third this month after a long lull and came in a flurry of al Qaida propaganda marking the sixth anniversary of the September 11, 2001, attacks in the United States.

US intelligence officials fear that a peace pact hatched between Pakistan’s government and pro-Taliban tribesmen last year that subsequently collapsed has given al Qaida space to regroup in the lawless border area where bin Laden and al-Zawahri are thought to be hiding.

Talat Masood, a retired Pakistan army general turned security analyst, said bin Laden appeared to be trying to associate himself with rising anti-Musharraf and anti-American sentiment.