Messages have previously
been sent to a TV station
An Arabic newspaper based in
London says it has received an e-mail purporting to have come from Osama
Bin Laden.
It is unclear whether the e-mail, which paid tribute to Palestinian
suicide attacks against Israel as well as the 11 September attacks on
the United States, was genuine. If so, it would be the first proof that
Bin Laden had survived US bombing raids against the Taleban and al-Qaeda
networks in Afghanistan.
The paper, Al-Quds Al-Arabi, said the message branded as a "betrayal"
Saudi Crown Prince Abdullah's offer in the name of the Arab world to
establish normal relations with Israel if it pulls out of all territory
occupied in 1967.
The initiative is at the centre of the two-day Arab summit which came to
an end in Beirut on Thursday.
Possible forgery
There has been no
proven message from Bin Laden since the height of the Afghan war, and in
March, Washington said it did not know whether he was dead or alive.
The newspaper's editor, Abdel Bari Atwan, said he believed the message
was from Bin Laden, partly because the language and terminology used
matched that of other messages purporting to be from him.
Video taped messages purportedly from the Saudi-born dissident have
previously been delivered to an Arabic television station.
Bin Laden's whereabouts
are unknown despite US bombing raids
"I believe, for the last
three months or so, [Bin Laden] turned to electronic e-mail simply
because he cannot really function as he used to and produce tapes,"
Mr Bari-Atwan told the BBC.
Asked if the message could have been forged by just anyone, he
replied: "It could be but I have a feeling that it is extremely
genuine ... because it was sent yesterday [Wednesday] and we haven't
received any denial from any part of the world."
Moreover, Mr Bari-Atwan
added, that it was "expected" that Bin Laden, who has been stripped of
his Saudi citizenship, would dismiss the Saudi initiative as treason.
"The initiative -
US-Zionist dressed up as Saudi - by Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz
is a plot and one aspect of the repeated betrayal of our causes
which have marked the history of the region's leaders," Bin Laden
reportedly said.
Tracing e-mail
Mr Bari-Atwan met and interviewed Bin Laden in the mid 1990s. Al-Quds
Al-Arabi did not give the sender's e-mail address or what steps it took
to authenticate the message. Questions have been raised about whether
the e-mail, if genuine, could shed light on Bin Laden's fate.
Peter Sommer, a research fellow at the London School of Economics, told
BBC News Online that it was possible to follow the route of e-mails, but
not always successful.
He said that most e-mails contain information which can provide routing
details - the path that the e-mail has taken from origin through
intermediate computers and internet service providers. But the path
could be falsified, he said. The point of origin, for example, could be
disguised.
He added that tracing the origins of an e-mail is such a lengthy
procedure that often the trail goes cold.
