Al-Qaeda leader blasts US-Egypt ties

Al-Qaeda leader Ayman Al-Zawahri on Wednesday posted a message on the Internet saying: "Despite the overthrow of former President Hosni Mubarak last year, his corrupt regime will remain in place until the country imposes Islamic (Sharia) law, stops answering to the United States and cancels its peace treaty (the Camp David agreement) with Israel." “The popular Arab uprisings have proved there are mainly Islamists united in their cause and have sparked a revolution against the mercenaries of America,” said Al-Zawahri in the recording, entitled “So Why Did We Revolt Against Him?”. Banned under Mubarak, the Muslim Brotherhood today holds more than 43 per cent of the seats in the Egyptian parliament, having won more than any other party in the country's most democratic election in six decades, Al- Zawahri added. “Egypt is not a free trade zone, nor an agent for America nor a middleman for Israel nor a tourist resort. It is the citadel of Islam. The fortress of pan-Arabism; the land of garrison, jihad, knowledge, and preaching” said Al-Zawahri, himself an Egyptian. Meanwhile, Al-Zawahri, who took up the reins of Al-Qaeda after the killing of Osama bin Laden last year, also said the uprisings were overwhelmingly Islamist in motive. “One of the latest signs of its shrinking power is the reduction in the US Department of Defense's budget,” said Al-Zawahri in the 24-minute audio recording posted on Islamist websites, adding “military arrogance” had brought it nothing but losses. US President Barack Obama in mid-February unveiled a defence budget for 2013 that proposed cuts in Pentagon spending for the first time since 1998, slashing military personnel costs and weapons purchases. “The biggest factor that forced America to reduce its defence budget is Allah’s help to the mujahideen (referring to those who fight holy war) to harm the evil empire of our time,” he said. Al-Zawahri stated that US overtures to the Afghan Taliban, with which it has made “exploratory” contacts for possible reconciliation, according to an Afghan diplomat, was further evidence of its defeat. “America is about to withdraw its forces from Afghanistan, and then not only accept, but insist upon requesting negotiations with the Islamic Emirate (Afghan Taliban), which it used to consider as a terrorist group that must be annihilated,” Al-Zawahri said.