Osama bin Laden’s first public message for over a year is a bid to show he is still in command of al-Qaeda, but it falls back on old threats and tactics and fails to dispel doubts about his health, security analysts said.

In an audiotape broadcast on Al Jazeera television, bin Laden warned of new attacks against the United States on its own soil but held out the prospect of a “truce” under unspecified conditions, linked to a US pullout from Iraq.

Yesterday’s message echoed bin Laden’s offer of a truce to Europeans in April 2004 — on that occasion with a three-month deadline — which governments rejected with contempt.

Arab analysts said bin Laden well understood that his latest offer would meet the same fate. Within three hours the White House said the United States “does not negotiate with terrorists”.

Analysts said his point was to show he was alive and “still in the game”, despite more than four years in hiding, and to portray himself as a political leader as well as a man of violence.

“He is presenting himself not as a terrorist, a bloodsucker, a man who would like to destroy the world — he also has a political agenda, he is using this terrorism for political ends,” said Abdel-Bari Atwan, editor of the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper and an al-Qaeda expert.

Al Jazeera said the tape was recorded in December, but several intelligence officials and analysts said the timing of its release may be a reaction to a US airstrike in Pakistan last week in which Pakistani intelligence officials said four al-Qaeda militants were believed killed. They included an expert bomb maker and a son-in-law of bin Laden’s deputy.

“It could be an effort to demonstrate that bin Laden is still out there and still a force to be reckoned with,” said a US counterterrorism official who asked not to be identified because the tape has not been authenticated.

“It may have been aired now to provide some reassurance to the jihadist community after last Friday’s airstrike in Pakistan.”

Bin Laden’s long silence since December 27, 2004, when his last audiotape was aired, had spawned two theories among intelligence officials and security experts.

Some thought he was so tightly holed up somewhere along the Pakistani-Afghan border that he could no longer smuggle out messages. Others believed he was biding his time to maximise the dramatic impact of his next tape, perhaps saving it to coincide with a major new attack.

But Thursday’s message only rehashed threats to launch new attacks inside the United States, an aim al-Qaeda has frequently repeated since the attacks of September 11, 2001 but has so far failed to achieve.

“If there is any plan, I don’t think he will announce it in advance ... so I would not really attach any value to this apart from the psychological warfare,” said Mustafa Alani, security analyst at the Gulf Research Center in Dubai.

“I don’t believe they have the capacity now to carry out a major operation, especially in the United States. Their war now is concentrated on two major fronts ... Iraq and Afghanistan.”

Alani said it was significant the message had appeared on an audiotape when a video would have had greater impact and could have quelled persistent speculation that bin Laden is sick or wounded.

“I think a video would have far more credibility ... the fact that it’s only audio possibly confirms rather than reduces the speculation,” Alani said. — Reuters