Agencies  --  Arab News

LONDON, 16 April 2004 — European leaders roundly dismissed yesterday a “truce offer” by terror mastermind Osama Bin Laden, saying the idea of negotiating with the Western world’s most wanted man was absurd.

An audiotape attributed to the Al-Qaeda leader offered peace to European countries that refrain from aggression toward Muslims and pull their troops out of the Muslim world. But the tape vowed to continue fighting the United States and Israel.

CIA and European security agencies said the voice on the tape probably was that of Bin Laden.

Within minutes of each other, Britain, Spain, Italy — key allies of the US-led campaign in Iraq — and the European Union rejected the offer as a ploy by terrorists. Germany and France, two European countries that opposed the war, also dismissed the offer.

“The idea of an armistice with a group that defines itself by violence is an absurdity,” a British Foreign Office spokesman said.

The voice in the audiotape broadcast by Dubai-based Al-Arabiya television said the offer — valid for three months — came after opinion polls showed Europeans wanted peace.

It offered a “reconciliation initiative” to European countries if they pledged not to be aggressive toward Muslims, “like the American plot against the big Islamic world.”

“It is in the interest of both parties to deprive them of spilling people’s blood for their own interests and in their following of the White House.”

And it added: “Peace will come into force with the departure of (their) last soldier from our countries.”

French President Jacques Chirac was among European leaders who ruled out any negotiations “with terrorists”. “There is no negotiation possible with terrorists,” Chirac said during a visit to Algeria.

The British Foreign Office described the purported offer as a cynical ploy to split Europe and the United States.

“Neither we nor our European partners are going to be intimidated into withdrawing from action against terrorism or to break the trans-Atlantic alliance that has been the cornerstone of our freedom and defense policy for decades.”

Italian Foreign Minister Franco Frattini, whose country is in shock over the execution of one of the four Italian hostages in Iraq, said discussing a peace deal with Bin Laden was “unthinkable”.

And Spain’s incoming foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos said the message, which justified the March 11 attacks in Madrid in which 191 people died, should be ignored.

European Commission President Romano Prodi said there was no way European nations would accept the truce offer.

Germany, which also opposed the Iraq war, said it was impossible to barter with “terrorists and criminals”.