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An audiotape purportedly from Osama bin Laden's deputy in al-Qaida, aired on Arab television Friday, warned that the terror group would target Americans "in their homeland" and would drive US forces from bases in the region.
Meanwhile, officials in the US are telling holiday travelers to be vigilant about the threat of terrorist attacks, a warning prompted in part by a raised level of ominous intercepted communications that hasn't quieted for months.
The significance of the sustained level of intelligence "chatter" is unclear, the officials said.
Homeland Security officials said they did not expect the national threat warning to be raised from yellow ?a the midpoint on its five-color scale ?a to orange unless more specific intelligence was received.
On Friday, the pan-Arab satellite channel Al-Jazeera broadcast excerpts from a 10-minute tape it said was recorded by Ayman al-Zawahri, the No. 2 figure in al-Qaida. The channel's editors said they received the tape earlier in the day through the mail.
The speaker on the tape, whose voice resembled al-Zawahri's, mentioned a visit to Iraq by US Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz ?a which took place in late October. The speaker did not mention last weekend's capture of ousted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.
The speaker also denied that the resistance US troops are facing in Iraq comes mainly from Saddam loyalists. He said the resistance fighters were "holy warriors."
"It is a real and authentic holy war of the Iraqi people," he said.
The speaker noted that two years have passed since the battle of Tora Bora, a major clash between US-led forces and al-Qaida fighters in the mountains of eastern Afghanistan.
"Two years after Tora Bora, the American bloodshed started to increase in Iraq, and the Americans have become unable to defend themselves or even defend their big criminals such as Wolfowitz," he said.
He was referring to an Oct. 26 rocket attack that barraged the Baghdad hotel where Wolfowitz was staying. A US colonel was killed in that attack, and Wolfowitz escaped unharmed.
"We are still chasing the Americans and their allies everywhere, even in their homeland," he said.
The weeks before and after the rocket attack on Wolfowitz saw an upsurge in attacks on US forces in Iraq ?a making November the bloodiest month for US forces since the fall of Saddam. Attacks lessened as the US military launched an offensive in late November. Violence has continued since Saddam's capture on Dec. 13.
Al-Jazeera's newscaster quoted the tape as saying: "Those renegades who offered the Americans military bases and support to kill Muslims should prepare for the day of settling scores because the Americans are ready to flee."
Montasser el-Zayat, an Egyptian lawyer who knows al-Zawahri, heard the tape and said it was undoubtedly al-Zawahri's voice. El-Zayat spent three years in an Egyptian prison with al-Zawahri in the early 1980s on charges related to President Anwar Sadat's 1981 assassination.
Also Friday, US officials said that the Navy has seized a boat carrying nearly two tons of hashish in the Persian Gulf, in what could be some of the first hard evidence of al-Qaida links to drug smuggling.
The guided missile destroyer USS Decatur intercepted the 40-foot boat on Monday. Aboard were a dozen men, three of them believed to have al-Qaida connections, and 3,780 pounds of hashish, the Navy said Friday.
"This is the first empirical evidence I've seen that conclusively links al-Qaida with the drug trade," said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at RAND, a think tank that often does work for the Pentagon.
The Decatur seized the boat, a wooden vessel called a dhow, near the Straits of Hormuz, a narrow part of the Persian Gulf where it opens into the Arabian Sea. The area is a known smuggling route for al-Qaida, the Navy said.
The drugs are worth between $8 million and $10 million, the Navy said.
Military officials would not say Friday why they believed the boat, its cargo and some of its crew were linked to al-Qaida. The boat remained under the Decatur's control and it had not been determined what to do with the men on board, the Navy said.
(People's Daily December 20, 2003)
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