The White House urged the world today to carry on backing the US-led war on terrorism and vowed to take the fight to the enemy after the broadcast of new audio tapes purportedly from Osama bin Laden.
In the tapes aired by Qatar-based Arabic television station Al Jazeera on Saturday, the speaker vowed more suicide attacks inside and outside the United States and warned that all countries backing Washington over Iraq were targets.
"It is a reminder that the global war on terror continues," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan, accompanying US President George W. Bush at an Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation summit in Bangkok where counter-terrorism is high on the agenda.
"Terrorists are enemies of the civilised world who seek to spread fear and chaos and have no regard for innocent life.
That's why we are taking the fight to the killers and bringing them to justice," McClellan said.
The tapes seemed likely to bolster Bush's planned message to the summit.
Bush told reporters in Manila yesterday: "The easiest thing to do is to think the war on terror is over with... And I just will remind people that...the United States is still threatened and our friends are threatened, and therefore we must continue to cooperate."
McClellan said US authorities would analyse the tapes. The Central Intelligence Agency typically takes a day or two to analyse tapes against previous bin Laden recordings.
The speaker on the tapes urged Iraqis to wage a holy war against American "crusaders" in Iraq until an Islamic government was set up in Baghdad.