September 09, 2007	Sunday	Sha'aban 26, 1428

LONDON, Sept 8: Abandoning his Kalashnikov and dyeing his beard from grey to black, Osama bin Laden presents a new image to the world in a video that makes no specific threats but may be a signal for new Al Qaeda attacks.

In a half-hour address released four days before the sixth anniversary of the Sept 11 attacks on the United States, Osama lurched between history lesson and sermon, urging Americans to ditch capitalist democracy and embrace Islam if they want to end the war in Iraq.

Security analysts said the long-awaited video — Osama’s first for nearly three years — disproved rumours of his death but was more significant for its style than its content.

By dyeing his beard and ditching his military camouflage jacket for Arabic robes, Osama was trying to portray himself as a new, mature figure — the spiritual leader of Al Qaeda, said Abdel Bari Atwan, London-based editor-in-chief of the Arabic newspaper al-Quds.

Others said the makeover was bizarre.

“It makes him, a man who claims he wants to be a martyr, look vain and ridiculous,” said M.J. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London think-tank.

Despite the lack of dramatic content, analysts said they could not rule out the possibility that Osama first appearance since the eve of the 2004 US presidential election was a rallying cry for a new attack.

“Because video tapes featuring Osama speaking to camera are so rare, the release of this particular tape could herald a major attack, though remarkably this message contains none of his usual open threats against the United States,” Gohel said.

Atwan, who has interviewed Osama, said: “Maybe this is a warning that an attack could happen soon...This is a sort of rallying video. Maybe there is a message to his followers: go ahead and do what you want to do.”Osama did not explain his long silence, which had prompted speculation he was too sick or too tightly holed up in a hiding place somewhere along the Pakistan-Afghan border to be able to make and smuggle out a message.

Amr El-Choubaki, a Cairo-based expert on Islamist movements, said the call for the US to convert to Islam was a sign he was not in a position to name more achievable objectives.

“It’s clear his influence within the Al Qaeda organisation... is now limited,” he said.

But Mohamed el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said the video, despite the lack of specific warnings, was “much more threatening this time”.

“It’s confident, it uses iconic language that suggests, ‘I’m commissioned to wage an unending war against you, and the only way to get peace is to convert to Islam’,” he said.

“He’s in a state of battle, a state of constant, unending war until he Islamises the world.”

“May America and its tyrants fail. The coming strike is inevitable, God willing,” wrote the moderator of the al-Ekhlaas site, who calls himself “Lover of Terror” and posted the message on Friday announcing the new tape was about to be released.—Reuters