The White House has said it believes a tape attributed to Osama bin Laden - in which he criticises the West - is authentic.
The Arab satellite television station, Al-Jazeera, today aired the tape which it reported was the voice of bin Laden, in which he accuses the West of waging war against Islam by trying to isolate the new Palestinian government.
The Islamic militant movement, Hamas, which leads the Palestinian government, is trying to distance itself from the comments in the tape.
A spokesman for Hamas said its own ideology was totally different from al-Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden said the Darfur crisis in western Sudan and Western efforts to isolate the Palestinian government since Hamas won January elections were part of this campaign.
In the brief excerpts of the tape that Al-Jazeera aired, the Saudi-born militant did not repeat his assertion in an audiotape issued in January that al-Qaeda was preparing attacks in the United States but was open to a conditional truce with Americans.
