Al-Qaeda's deputy leader denounced last month's Mideast peace conference in Annapolis, Md., as a "betrayal" of Palestinians in a new audio message posted Friday on an Internet site. The conference relaunched Palestinian-Israeli peace talks after a seven year halt.
"The Annapolis meeting was held to turn Palestine into a Jewish state," Ayman al-Zawahri said in the 20-minute posting. "The czar of Washington invited 16 Arab countries ... to sit in one room, at one table with the Israelis," al-Zawahri said, adding that the conference "witnessed the betrayal deals to sell Palestine."
Al-Zawahri mainly addressed Arabs, urging them to condemn the Annapolis conference and label Mahmoud Abbas as "the traitor," adding that the Palestinian "brother-president sold you out in Annapolis and in its aftermath."
It's time now, he said, for the Muslims to "extent hands to other jihad brothers." "My brothers in Palestine, we, all Muslims, the Mujahedeen are by your side, in your confrontation with the Zionist enemy," al-Zawahri said. "We will not let you down even if your politicians do."
He also slammed imprisoned Jihadists in Egypt, who after years in jail turned away from their militant stance. "Those revisionists are in fact calling for a new American religion that violates God's rules," he said.
"I am addressing the Muslim nation in Egypt in particular: where is your role in confronting aggression on Islam and Muslims?" al-Zawahri said. "Stand up and ... be aware of the poisons of weakness and submission which the traitor regime is trying to inject into you through the tongues of the revisionists."
He called on Egyptian soldiers and also Bedouin tribes in Egypt's Sinai penisnsula to rise against the rule of President Hosni Mubarak. "God wants you to get ready, for the sake of God," al-Zawahri said.
