Video justifies action by US, says Pentagon

The Osama bin Laden tape demonstrated clearly "why terrorism and terrorists must be defeated before they get their hands on weapons of mass destruction", the US Secretary of Defence told journalists at a Pentagon briefing.

As to the involvement of bin Laden in September 11th, Mr Donald Rumsfeld said the tape spoke for itself. He had already long been convinced, he added.

The video tape, released by the Department of Defence yesterday, has been in the possession of the US since late November when it was found in a Jalalabad home by an unnamed Afghan shortly after opposition forces took the city and was handed over to US forces.

It bears a date stamp which says it was made on November 9th, the day the northern Afghan city of Mazar-e-Sharif fell to the Northern Alliance.

The tape, the audio quality of which is very poor, was viewed by President Bush on November 30th but only released after the department had brought in at least two outside linguists to verify its own translation. Experts also verified that the tape has not been tampered with, Mr Rumsfeld said.

On the tape, bin Laden is seen talking with several other men, including two aides and an unidentified Saudi sheik. Entering the room, bin Laden bends over to greet the sheik, then smilingly takes his place next to him, sitting cross-legged. The sheik thanks him saying: "You have given us weapons, you have given us hope and we thank Allah for you.

"Everybody praises what you did, the great action you did, which was first and foremost by the grace of Allah," the sheik continues. "This is the guidance of Allah and the blessed fruit of jihad."

The tape's political effect, however, is likely to be as much a product of the universally understood body language of bin Laden, particularly his laughter, as of the specifics of his "confession" - "smugness", in the words of Republican Senator Lindsay Graham.

"The tape is a smoking gun, in itself incriminating of bin Laden," Senator Bob Graham, chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said on CNN. "But more than that it gives you a sense of the demeanour, the person of bin Laden," the Florida Democrat said. "He speaks as though he were an engineer describing a structural failure rather than a person who has just planned, orchestrated and directed one of the most horrific acts in history."

Senator Richard Shelby, vice-chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, said one of the key disclosures of the tape was that bin Laden was clearly targeting the Saudis. New York's mayor, Mr Rudi Giuliani, said any possible doubt about the justification of US military action was removed.

A Pentagon statement said it released the tape after balancing "concerns about any additional pain that could be caused by its release against the value of having the world fully appreciate what we are up against in the war against terrorism."

The statement said the tape was released with an English translation and subtitling, prepared independently by Mr George Michael, translator at the Diplomatic Language Services, and Dr Kassem M. Wahba, Arabic language programme co-ordinator at the School of Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University.

"They collaborated on their translation and compared it with translations done by the US government for consistency. There were no inconsistencies in the translations," the statement claimed.