Bin Laden calls for retaliation

Boycotts, attacks aimed at forcing U.S. to leave Mideast

BY JOYCE M. DAVIS
Mercury News Washington Bureau

WASHINGTON -- Exiled Saudi Arabian multimillionaire Osama bin Laden is calling on Muslims worldwide to take up arms against the United States and boycott American companies in retaliation for U.S. missile strikes against his camps in Afghanistan and a chemical plant in Sudan.

In an exclusive telephone interview, Sheikh Omar Barkri, bin Laden's London representative, said Friday that the man he calls ``the true leader of the Islamic nation,'' has issued new anti-American communiques -- written only in Arabic -- urging Muslims to avoid U.S. embassies and installations -- and to fight Arab regimes friendly to the United States. Its stated purpose: to get the United States out of the Middle East.

Muslim leaders in Silicon Valley, however, predicted that although many American Muslims have decried the U.S. strikes in Afghanistan and Sudan on Thursday, bin Laden's call to arms would have little impact beyond his extremist network.

Sheik Hisham Kabbani of Los Altos Hills, chairman of the Islamic Supreme Council of America, stressed that bin Laden is an extremist driven by an ideology that is not true Islam.

``All religions call for peace and all religions call for love and religions never call for extremism and terrorism,'' Kabbani said.

According to Barkri, bin Laden has called on all Muslims to heed the call for arms against the United States because ``the attack against the sovereignty of Sudan and Afghanistan is an attack against the entire Islamic nation.''

Bin Laden's call might appeal to a fraction of Muslims, however, Kabbani cautioned.

``There might be some who share his political or ideological agenda who might respond to his call,'' said Kabbani, who heads the Washington, D.C.-based lobby group. ``But it's a very, very small minority.''

He said not even the exiled bin Laden's brothers and sisters -- who have children in America -- would respond.

Other Silicon Valley Muslim leaders agreed, saying bin Laden had no moral, religious or institutional standing within the Islamic world.

But Abdullah Hassanat, editor of the respected Jordan Times in Amman, said he feared that many Muslims would take seriously bin Laden's call to boycott American companies and attack U.S. installations.

Middle East unrest

``The U.S. action has enraged more people in the region and driven them into the ranks of the disgruntled who could be used one way or the other in terrorists acts,'' he said. ``People here are asking, what about the Jewish radicals who are controlling the Israeli government and endangering the whole peace process in the Middle East?''

Hassanat predicted that the United States would face worsened diplomatic and political relations with Middle East governments.

Barkri called for the United States to withdraw its forces from Saudi Arabia and insisted that President Clinton not only miscalculated reaction in the Middle East, but also struck the wrong target. Bin Laden, he said, was nowhere near the U.S. targets in Afghanistan.

He said bin Laden would now begin moving from country to country to prevent his being detected. ``He will continue his struggle until the liberation of Islamic land.''

Barkri said his role in the London-based International Islamic Front is to provide support for bin Laden, both financially and as his spokesman in the West.

Barkri repeated bin Laden's assertions that he was not responsible for the bombings of the U.S. embassies in Dar es Salaam and in Nairobi, although he said bin Laden applauds the people who committed the acts.

U.S. officials say that while bin Laden doesn't control or even direct certain terrorist groups, he finances and inspires them.

Friday, Hamas, the Islamic Resistance Movement, joined the call to attack U.S. targets. Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi, who the U.S. charges is responsible for the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, led protests lambasting the U.S. strikes.

Bin Laden's chief goal, Barkri said, is to get U.S. troops out of Saudi Arabia.

``After that we can negotiate the embargo against Iraq and negotiate the state of Palestine,'' he said.

Barkri said the bombing of the two embassies had already forced the United States to begin reducing its presence in the region.

Barkri warned that the United States, as well as Europe and the Middle East, should expect further violence. Many in the Middle East, especially in Jordan and Egypt, fear that violence will be directed not only against U.S. interests, but also against Middle Eastern governments friendly to the West.

``But this is not just a clash of Islamic extremism,'' said Tahseen Bashir, former Egyptian ambassador to the United States, ``but of the dispossessed against the mighty.''

Frustration with U.S.

Bashir said much of the Muslim world had grown bitter and frustrated at the lack of U.S. pressure on Israel to negotiate with the Palestinians, and had grown increasingly angry at the suffering in Iraq caused by the U.N. embargo.

``And there is a little holocaust going on in Kosovo, which the United States was saying three or four years ago it would not allow. But they are letting it happen,'' Bashir said.

It's possible, Hassanat suggested, that the U.S. strikes, coupled with what's seen as U.S. neglect of the Middle East peace process and oppression of Iraq, actually may have increased the chances that bin Laden will get what he wants.

He noted that Saudi Prince Khalid bin Sultan, commander in chief of the Desert Storm operation against Iraq, had recently shocked the Arab world by writing long columns critical of the U.S. presence in the region.

``Could it be,'' he asked, ``that the Saudis are actually laying the groundwork for asking Americans to leave the region?''

Mercury News Staff Writer Rodney Foo contributed to this report.