Qaeda scorns Obama and urges attacks

By Randall Mikkelsen

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Al Qaeda's deputy leader accused Barack Obama of betraying his race and his father's Muslim heritage on Wednesday and urged more attacks, as the group tried to counter the incoming U.S. president's global popularity.

Osama bin Laden's second-in-command Ayman al Zawahri attacked Obama as a "house Negro," a racially-charged term used by 1960s black American Muslim leader Malcolm X to describe black slaves loyal to white masters.

"You represent the direct opposite of honourable black Americans like ... Malcolm X," Zawahri said in an 11-minute recording publicized on the Internet on Wednesday. It was al Qaeda's first high-level commentary on Obama's election on November 4. Bin Laden could also release a message on Obama within the next two weeks or so, one analyst said.

Zawahri criticized Obama's support for Israel and plans to send more U.S. troops to Afghanistan, where he said they were destined to fail. He urged Islamist fighters to keep striking a "criminal" United States until it withdraws from Muslim lands.

The recording was distributed on a videotape that carried pictures of Obama at the Western Wall in Jerusalem and Malcom X, flanking Zawahri in the centre.

U.S. officials and analysts, alert for signs of an attack in the period leading up to the transfer of presidential power on January 20, said there was no sign of an imminent threat.

They cast Zawahri's message as an attempt to shift al Qaeda's focus from U.S. President George W. Bush and maintain an enmity against the United States among its supporters.

"They're faced with what is by any accounting a change in this country," said one U.S. counterterrorism official who asked not to be identified.