Militants claiming links
to al-Qaeda vowed new attacks on Europe once a "truce"
offered by Osama bin Laden expires in two weeks, newspapers
said on Friday.
Governments and analysts
played down the threat, noting the group in question had
made unfounded claims before; French President Jacques
Chirac said that he took any such report seriously but
that little could be done to improve already tight security.
"To the European people
... you only have a few more days to accept bin Laden’s
truce or you will only have yourselves to blame,"
read the purported statement by the Abu Hafs al-Masri
Brigades, referring to bin Laden’s three-month "truce
offer", effectively an ultimatum, which ends in mid-July.
"The race now is between
you, time and the European governments which have refused
to stop their attacks against Muslims. "So do not
blame us for what will happen and we apologise to you
in advance if you are among those killed."
Al-Qaeda leader bin Laden,
in an audiotape on April 15, gave European states three
months to pull troops out of Afghanistan, Iraq and other
Muslim countries or face new attacks like the Madrid train
bombings.
European security sources
viewed that offer as a propaganda ploy to help justify
future attacks. But a senior intelligence official told
Reuters this week that there was no indication of plans
for any attack immediately after the ultimatum expires.
"Muslims in the West
should depart to Muslim states if they can," the
group said. "Those who cannot should take precautions
and live in Muslim areas, have enough food to last a month."
Germany said that it did not consider the threat particularly
credible. An interior ministry spokesman noted that the
Abu Hafs group claimed responsibility for last year’s
power cuts in New York that turned out to be caused by
a technical failure. A British security source also said
that the threat was not credible: "They claimed the
Madrid bombings and it clearly wasn’t them ... They’re
just repeating the same old bile."
"Of course we take
any type of terrorist threat on European territory very
seriously," Chirac told a joint news conference in
Paris with Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi. But
asked whether France would increase security, he said:
"We are doing the absolute maximum in this area."
Berlusconi echoed his comments.
