PARIS: The Al Qaeda network is waging jihad in Afghanistan in an effort to restore the Taliban government, an Al Qaeda operative said in an audiotape posted on Tuesday on the Internet.

“We, members of the Al Qaeda organisation, ... are currently waging jihad in Afghanistan alongside our brethren from the Taliban,” Abu Laith al Libi said in the recording.

Mr Libi, a Libyan Islamist who joined the Afghan mujahideen in the 1980s, said the aim was ‘to defeat the occupier and the government it installed in Kabul, and to reinstate the Islamic state’.

The war was being waged ‘from bases inside Afghanistan against positions located deep inside Afghan territory’, said Libi, believed to be an explosives and guerilla warfare expert.

According to Mr Libi, the joint operations are being carried out by Al Qaeda and the Taliban ‘under the command of Mullah Saif al Rahman al Mansur’.

He was ‘a renowned leader in Afghanistan who occupied (public) posts and assumed responsibilities in the Islamic emirate’ declared by the Taliban, said Mr Libi.

His remarks were recorded during Ramazan in October.

He surfaced in a recording aired on Saudi-owned MBC television in July 2002, saying at the time that Al Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden and Taliban leader Mullah Mohammed Omar were ‘in good health’. —AFP