WASHINGTON, April 29: Al Qaeda’s second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri has urged its followers to bring down the ‘pro-US government’ in Pakistan, says a monitoring report issued here on Saturday.

Zawahiri made the call in a 16-minute video with English sub-titles that appeared late Friday on a website.

The Al Qaeda leader was shown urging the Pakistani people to stand with his group in its fight against the US and Israel.

He claimed that Pakistani leaders had allowed the country’s nuclear programme to be put under the supervision of the US government.

The video titled “A message to the people of Pakistan,” was mainly dedicated to criticism of President Pervez Musharraf, accusing him of undermining his own country to help the US, Israel and India.

There was no date in the video, but Zawahiri mentioned a ‘recent’ visit by President Bush to India and Pakistan. During the visit, Mr Bush “gave a great push to India’s nuclear programme while handing out orders and instructions in Pakistan,” he said.

Zawahiri also denounced the leaders of Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Iraq as ‘traitors’ and called upon Muslims to rise up to ‘confront them’.

He said the US and British forces were bogged down in Iraq and “have achieved nothing but loss, disaster and misfortune.”