WASHINGTON – US president Barack Obama has dismissed Osama Bin Laden’s attempt to claim responsibility for the failed Christmas Day attack on a US aircraft, a plot thought to have been hatched in Yemen, saying it was evidence al-Qaeda was greatly weakened.
Bin Laden associated himself with the attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to blow up a transatlantic flight over Detroit in a recording claimed to be from “Osama to Obama”.
“Al-Qaeda itself is greatly weakened from where it was back in 2000,” Mr Obama told ABC News yesterday. “Bin Laden sending out a tape trying to take credit for a Nigerian student who engaged in a failed bombing attempt is an indication of how weakened he is because this is not something necessarily directed by him.”
US attention is instead increasingly focused on Yemen, where Abdulmutallab is believed to have been trained.
US secretary of state Hillary Clinton is expected at a London conference on the threat from Yemen today. – (Guardian service)