DAMASCUS, Nov 4: Arab politicians and the Al-Azhar Institute rejected on Sunday a call from Osama bin Laden for Muslims to join in a “religious war” against the Christian West.

“Bin Laden does not speak in the name of the Arabs and Muslims,” Arab League chief Amr Mussa told journalists in Damascus ahead of an Arab meeting focused on support for the Palestinians and the repercussions in the Middle East of the September 11 attacks in the United States.

Egyptian Foreign Minister Ahmed Maher for his part said there was “a war between Osama and the world,” in answer to a question on Osama’s comments broadcast the previous day by the Qatari-based satellite television channel Al-Jazeera.

The al-Azhar institute rejected all “religious wars” in an indirect response to Osama’s appeal.

The al-Azhar centre for Islamic studies expressed its opposition to the “claims of conflict between civilisations, a war of religions and a conflict between cultures,” a statement quoted by the Egyptian news agency MENA said.

The religious institute did not explicitly refer to the comments of Osama, who said Sunday in a videotape broadcast on the Arabic Al-Jazeera satellite channel that the current crisis was “a religious war” between Muslims and western “crusaders.”

Al-Azhar also said in its statement that “the war against terrorism does not justify aggression against the poor and unarmed people of Afghanistan.”

“Towns, villages, mosques, old men, women and children of this people are exposed to violent aggression, without any logical or acceptable reason, and even before the conclusions of the inquiry into the events of last September,” it said.

Jordan’s Foreign Minister Abdul Ilah al-Khatib also criticised Osama for rallying the Muslim masses to a holy war.

“The concept presented of Arab-Muslim civilisation in conflict with the rest of the world is very dangerous and carries great danger for all Arabs and their interests.

“We must be very vigilant and we must not allow these concepts to largely come to pass,” he told reporters gathered at the Arab League meeting.

“We face an international situation that demands much vigilance,” he added, so that Arabs and Muslims “do not bear the repercussions of the (terrorists) causes.”

UN special representative to Afghanistan Lakhdar Brahimi for his part did not “wish to respond” to accusations raised by Osama against the United Nations, his spokesman Eric Falt told AFP on Sunday.

“Mr. Brahimi does not wish to respond to this” accusation, Falt said in Tehran, refusing to make any further comment.—AFP