Hamas, Sudan say 'no thanks' to Osama bin Laden

Al Jazeera reports that shortly after it broadcast bin Laden's message on Sunday, Sami Abu Zuhri, a spokesman for Hamas, declared that Hamas's ideology was " totally different" from bin Laden's.

"What Osama bin Laden said is his opinion, but Hamas has its own positions which are different to the ones expressed by bin Laden," he said.

However, he said that what he called the "international siege on the Palestinian people" would inevitably lead to tensions in the Arab and Islamic world.

"It's natural that this tension is going to create an impression that there is a Western-Israeli alliance working against the Palestinians," Abu Zuhri said.

Abu Zuhri also said that Hamas wishes to have "good relations with the West."

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In the audiotape, bin Laden said the West's isolation of the Hamas-led Palestinian Authority was proof of a " Crusader-Zionist war" by the West on Muslims, though he also called the joining of "infidel assemblies," as he intimates Hamas did with the Palestinian Authority, taboo. In addition, bin Laden called on his supporters to go to Sudan and fight UN-led peacekeeping forces there.

"When he attacks Israel, this is something the Arab world can agree upon," Gissin said. "He has been criticized for the destruction and carnage he's causing the Muslim nation. He's looking for another justification... Criticizing Israel sounds more politically correct."

In a commentary for The Australian, journalist Richard King writes that bin Laden's end goal is actually opposed to that of the Palestianian people, and that this incompatibility is emblematic of a larger conflict in the Muslim world.

Bin Laden does not want a free Palestine but a Palestine under sharia law.... There is a war within the Muslim world. As yesterday's terror attacks on the Sinai peninsula remind us, the principal enemy of fundamentalist Islam is moderate Islam, not the West. Al-Qai'da's ultimate aim is to re-establish the Islamic caliphate and bring the entire Muslim world under the kind of repressive rule imposed by the Taliban in the late '90s. Those who desire to live in freedom from the boring clerics deserve our support.

The Associated Press reports that, like Hamas, the Sudanese government distanced itself from bin Laden's statements, saying, "We are not concerned with such statements, or any other statement that comes from foreign quarters about the crisis in Darfur." Experts said, however, that bin Laden may nonetheless have helped government policies by providing it with grounds to oppose the United Nations.

Sudan's government has opposed the idea of shifting the peacekeeping mission in Darfur to the U.N. from the current African Union force, noted John Pendergast, a Sudan specialist with the International Crisis Group in Washington.

"The statement by bin Laden greatly serves their interest in Darfur," he said, and would "give a good pretext to those who are bent on preventing that from happening."

Reuters reports that bin Laden's statement is not a factor in the United Nations' plans to take over peacekeeping responsibilities in Sudan.

"The comments made by this guy (are) always, always negative. We should not be influenced by whatever comments he made," said Chinese Ambassador Wang Guangya, the Security Council president for April.

U.S. Ambassador John Bolton said: "That's a mark of bin Laden's desperation and certainly won't affect our planning."

Reuters reports in another article, however, that some experts worry that once UN troops arrive in Darfur, foreign militants could come to attack them amid Sudan's Muslim civil conflicts, turning it into another Iraq.

On the other side of the Darfur conflict, Al Jazeera reports that at least one of the rebel factions fighting the Sudanese government wants no part of bin Laden.

Ahmed Hussein, from the Justice and Equality Movement, a Sudanese rebel group, said: "We categorically reject these declarations.

"His words are completely disconnected from the reality in Darfur. Bin Laden is still preaching the theory of an American-Zionist conspiracy when the real problem comes from Khartoum, which is a Muslim government killing other Muslims."

He warned that such comments risked "encouraging the Khartoum regime to perpetuate injustice and its strategy against Darfur".

Such sentiments are echoed in editorials by The Washington Post and The Houston Chronicle. The Post rebuts bin Laden's claims that the Darfur conflict was started by the West, pointing out that "if there is an invisible hand behind the rebellion, it is that of Hassan al-Turabi," a radical cleric who calls bin Laden a hero. The Chronicle writes that Muslim countries, "which have been inexcusably passive during the murder of Darfur's Muslims, should seize this moment to reclaim their honor."

And on progressive news website TomPaine.com, Tom Porteous warns that bin Laden can present his historically inaccurate take on Darfur because "current U.S. and British policies in the Middle East could hardly be better designed to encourage the political resentments, frustrations and the pervasive sense of helplessness and lack of control that undercut the efforts of political moderates and fuel political extremism and terrorism." He writes that it is the battle for Muslim hearts and minds that will decide the war on terrorism, but presently, "it is a battle in which the United States and its allies seem bent on handing victory to the most reactionary and violent forces in the Muslim world."

Also...
• Fresh air strikes in Sri Lanka, but truce 'still holds' (The Times of London)
• Israel launches "eye in the sky" over Iran (Reuters)
• Japan, U.S. Agree on Cost of Shifting Troops to Guam (Bloomberg)
• Playing a Terrorist: An Actor's Dilemma (Los Angeles Times)
• Feedback appreciated. E-mail Arthur Bright.