DUBAI - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden said the crisis in Sudan's Darfur region and the isolation of Hamas were proof the West was waging war against Islam, according to an audiotape attributed to him aired on Sunday.

In the tape broadcast on Al Jazeera television, which U.S. intelligence agencies believed was authentic, the Saudi-born militant criticised the Sudanese government for agreeing a U.S.-backed peace deal for the south.

Al Qaeda's leader Osama bin Laden speaks at a news conference in Afghanistan in this May 26, 1998 file photo. Osama bin Laden said Western efforts to isolate the Palestinian Hamas government and the Darfur crisis in Sudan were examples of the West's "crusader war" against Islam, according to an audiotape aired on April 23, 2006. [Reuters]

He also inveighed against the Palestinians' Hamas-led government for breaking what he said was a taboo against "joining infidel assemblies" and entering parliament.

Despite moves taken by Sudan and Hamas that might be seen as in step with Washington's stated goal of peace and democracy for the region, bin Laden said the West was still isolating the Palestinian government and the United States was planning to send troops to southern Sudan "to steal its oil."

"Their (the West's) rejection of Hamas affirms that it is a Crusader-Zionist war against Muslims," bin Laden said.

"It is scornful to people that your (the West's) warplanes and tanks are destroying houses over the heads of our folk and children in Palestine, Iraq, Afghanistan, Chechnya and Pakistan, then you smile at us and say that 'we are not enemies of Islam but enemies of terrorists'."

"Reality shows that they lie."

Bin Laden accused people in the West of sharing responsibility for their countries' war against Muslims, implying they were fair game for revenge attacks against militants.

Bin Laden also urged his followers to prepare for a long war against Western would-be occupiers in Darfur.

"I call on the mujahideen and their supporters in Sudan ... and the Arabian peninsula to prepare all that is necessary to wage a long-term war against the Crusaders in western Sudan," bin Laden said, accusing the West of seeking to divide Sudan.

Sudan hosted bin Laden in the 1990s, but on the tape he criticised a U.S.-backed peace deal between Khartoum and southern rebels and slammed the Sudanese government for not enforcing Islamic sharia law throughout the country.

Sudan is resisting pressure for U.N. peacekeepers to deploy in Darfur. Some U.N. troops have arrived in southern Sudan, the first of an expected 10,000 peacekeepers to be sent there.

Bin Laden condemned the United Nations as an "infidel" body.

"It is a tool to implement Crusader-Zionist resolutions, among which are the resolutions of war against us (Muslims) and those to divide and occupy our land," he said.

GOOD RELATIONS

The Sudanese government and Hamas rejected bin Laden's criticism outright.

"We are interested in good relations with the West and we call on the Western countries to reconsider their stance toward the Palestinian cause and the Muslim nation," Hamas's official spokesman in the Gaza Strip, Sami Abu Zuhri, told Reuters.

In Sudan, Foreign Ministry spokesman Jamal Ibrahim said Khartoum distanced itself from bin Laden's statement.

"In Sudan we are not concerned with any mujahideen or any crusade or any war with the international community. We are keen on reaching a peaceful solution to the crisis in Darfur," he said.

In the excerpts, bin Laden did not repeat his assertion in the last audiotape attributed to him broadcast on January 19 that al Qaeda was preparing attacks in the United States but was open to a conditional truce with Americans.

But his remarks about the complicity of Westerners in the policies of their governments appeared to be an argument that they were fair game for revenge attacks by militants.

"The war is a responsibility shared between the people and the governments. The war goes on and the people are renewing their allegiance to its rulers and masters," bin Laden said.

The al Qaeda leader, on the run since the U.S. campaign to oust Afghanistan's Taliban government in 2001 after the September 11 attacks, said Western leaders had ignored his truce offers.

Bin Laden and his right-hand man, Ayman al-Zawahri, are believed to be hiding in a mountainous area on the border between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

The tape appears to have been recorded since March 14 when Israel raided a jail in Jericho because bin Laden mentioned the West Bank incident.