uleiman Abu Ghaith, a spokesman for Al Qaeda, claimed in an audio recording broadcast late Saturday that the organization carried out the bloody April attack on a synagogue in Tunis and threatened renewed operations in the United States and elsewhere.
"Our security and military bodies are now monitoring, investigating and observing new American targets, other than the targets that were monitored before, which we will attack shortly in a way that will delight all Muslims," Mr. Abu Ghaith said, adding, "Also our martyr elements are ready and willing to launch attacks against American and Jewish interests both domestically and abroad."
He claimed the campaign in Afghanistan had largely failed to dent the organization. "We believe that we are still in the beginning of the war and this is only one round of this war," the spokesman said in the group's first such tape released in some two months.
He said that no one should doubt their ability to execute further attacks, noting that Al Qaeda carried out the bombing of two U.S. embassies in Africa, of a U.S. warship in Yemen as well as the Sept. 11 attacks.
The Arabic tape was played on Al Jazeera, the cable news channel broadcast from Qatar in the Persian Gulf that has received similar messages in the past.
The spokesman's remarks seemed to indicate that Al Qaeda is paying attention to what is being said about it in Washington.
"What the American officials are saying is true, we will launch attacks against the Americans, but in the time that we set and the place that we set and the way that we set," he said. "Neither Dick Cheney nor the American secretary of defense nor the American president can determine the place nor the time nor the way that we will attack."
Al Jazeera said that it received the recording from a Kuwaiti journalist who told them that he downloaded off two different Internet sites. A preliminary check of the sites failed to locate the recording, but Al Jazeera said that the voice on the tape matched that of previous recordings by Mr. Abu Ghaith, believed to be with Mr. bin Laden.
"I would like to assure the Muslims that Sheik Osama bin Laden is in good health and all the rumors about Sheik Osama's illness and being wounded in Tora Bora are devoid of any truth," Mr. Abu Gaith said, adding that the same was true of Dr. Ayman Zawahiri, the Egyptian surgeon who is Mr. bin Laden's main lieutenant.
"I can confirm that 98 percent of the leadership of the Qaeda organization are safe, thanks God, and they are running all the matters in the best way," he said, adding that Al Qaeda supporters would soon have an encounter with Mr. bin Laden himself.
"He will appear on TV screens very soon," Mr. Abu Ghaith said.
The tape was evidently new because the spokesman made references to the debate in the United States whether the attacks on Sept. 11 could have been anticipated by its intelligence services.
The spokesman once again attempted to link an Al Qaeda operation to what is happening in the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, a favorite method of trying to garner support in the Arab and wider Muslim worlds.
He said Al Qaeda was behind the explosion of a fuel tanker outside a synagogue on the scenic island of Djerba killed 17 people, 12 of them German tourists. Officials in Tunis first portrayed the attack as an accident, but then linked the bomber to Islamic extremists in Europe.
"It was a young man who belonged to the organization who could not bear seeing his brothers in Palestine being murdered, slaughtered, killed, their blood shed and dishonored," he said, "while seeing the Jews in his city, in Djerba, wandering in the streets, have fun, performing their ceremonies as they wished."