MIDDLE EAST: Al Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman al-Zawahri, has urged Palestinians to boycott a referendum on a statehood proposal that implicitly recognises Israel, in a videotape aired on al-Jazeera television yesterday.
"I call on them [ Muslims] to refuse to take part in any Palestinian referendum," said Zawahri, bespectacled and wearing a white turban. "Palestine is not for bargaining and bidding."
President Mahmoud Abbas plans to hold the referendum by July 31st, according to Palestinian officials.
Major Western donors led by the United States froze direct aid to the Palestinian government after Hamas Islamists won January elections and refused to recognise Israel, renounce violence or embrace interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.
"Arab governments did not have the courage to even meet the Palestinians' needs for one month," said Zawahri, "because the orders came [ from Washington] to their agents to starve the Palestinians and to isolate them."
He rejected as an "Arab capitulation initiative" a 2002 Arab peace proposal which offers Israel normal relations in return for withdrawal to borders that existed before the 1967 Middle East war.
Zawahri also condemned the Sudanese government, which is poised to hold talks with the United Nations and the African Union. The two bodies are trying to convince Khartoum to accept a deployment of UN peacekeepers in the Darfur region.
The video appeared to have been made before the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq was killed on Wednesday. Zawahri hailed Abu Musab al-Zarqawi without mentioning his death.
"May God praise the lions of Islam in Iraq, and may God praise the hero of Islam, the patient mujahid, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi."
The Egyptian militant Islamic leader also referred to protests by Egyptian judges against what they say is state interference in the judiciary.
"In Egypt, the crusader system supports the secular system that violates the judges' integrity, cheats in elections and enforces emergency law," Zawahri said. - (Reuters)