Fast Facts: Tape Excerpts

CAIRO, Egypt – The following is a list of excerpts of Usama bin Laden's most recent purported taped message as broadcast Sunday by the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite broadcaster.

Hamas-Zionism-United Nations

"Their opposition to the Hamas victory proves that this is a crusade against Islam. This shows what Sheik Ayman al-Zawahiri [bin Laden's No. 2] warned about before, not to enter into an infidel's council. The sanctions imposed by the West on the Hamas government prove more that there is a Zionist crusader war on Islam."

"This unfairness and aggression has lasted nine decades. Any attempt to retake our rights and to punish the Israeli oppressor is rejected by the commanders of the Crusader-Zionist alliance, using what they call their veto right. It shows their anger over the Hamas movement as well."

"This International Crusade and Buddhism have the permanent five chairs [on the U.N. Security Council] ... . America and Britain represent the Christian Protestants, Russia represents the Christian Orthodox, France represents Christian Catholic and China represents the Buddhists, but the Islamic world is made of 57 countries and 20 percent of the earth's people ... who have no seat in the Security Council."

The United Nations is "a commission of infidels, and anyone who agrees with its rules is an infidel. It is a tool to implement the Crusade-Zionism decisions against Muslims."

"You [non-Muslims] insult people when your planes and tanks are destroying homes on the heads of our people and children in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Pakistan. Then you smile in our faces and tell us you are not against Islam but against the terrorists. You insist on continuing your crusader campaigns against our people, occupying our countries and stealing our resources."

Sudan

On the peace agreement that ended the long-running civil war between southern Sudanese rebels and the government in Khartoum:

"Let the Sudanese President Omar al-Bashir and American president G. Bush know that this agreement is not even worth the ink it was written with. We will not be committed to it, no one has the right to give up an inch of the Islamic land, and the south will stay as a part of the Islamic soil, even if the wars will continue for the coming decades."

He accused the United States of igniting strife in Darfur, in western Sudan "to pave the way for sending Crusader forces [U.N troops] to occupy the region and steal its oil under the pretext of peacekeeping. It is a continuing Crusader-Zionist war against Muslims."

"Muslims and their followers in Sudan and in the Arab peninsula should get ready to conduct a long war against these crusader thugs in western Sudan."

"Our goal is clear, and that is to defend Sudan, its territory and people, not to defend the Khartoum government. Even if our interests converged, our dispute with [the Khartoum government] is great. It is enough that it failed to apply [Islamic] Sharia laws and squandered the south [where the rebels, mainly Christians and animists, have semiautonomy, sizable oil resources and can secede in six years]."