30 January 2010 / REUTERS, DUBAI
Osama bin Laden urged an end to reliance on the US dollar as one solution to the global financial crisis and blamed developed countries for climate change, in an audiotape said to be of the al-Qaeda leader.
The authenticity of the tape, aired on Friday and the second by bin Laden to air on Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera this week, could not be immediately confirmed. “It is necessary for us to avoid doing business in the dollar, and to finish with it in the fastest possible time,” bin Laden said on the brief tape. Saudi-born bin Laden has never been found and is believed to still be hiding in the mountainous border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan. He is known to suffer from ill-health. US soldiers and Afghan militia forces launched a large-scale assault on the Tora Bora mountains in 2001 after the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States in pursuit of bin Laden, believed to have been hiding in the region with supporters after Afghanistan’s Taliban government was removed from power. In excerpts from Friday’s tape lasting under three minutes, bin Laden also blamed Western countries for climate change. “Talk about climate change is not an ideological luxury but a reality,” he said. “All of the industrialized countries, especially the big ones, bear responsibility for the global warming crisis.”
