A new tape apparently from Osama bin Laden calls on Muslims to attack the oil fields of Iraq and the Persian Gulf:

DUBAI, Dec 16 (AFP) - Osama bin Laden called on his fighters to focus their attacks on oil sites in the Gulf and Iraq while urging Saudi leaders to give up power or face a popular uprising, in a new purported audiotape message Thursday.

“Take jihad (holy war) to stop (the Americans) getting hold of (the oil). Concentrate your operations on the oil, in particular in Iraq and the Gulf,” said the voice on the tape attributed to the Al-Qaeda leader.

The lengthy message also warned Riyadh’s rulers that “the people have woken” and laid the blame for deadly unrest gripping the country on the kingdom’s own regime.

“Muslims are determined to recover their rights whatever the price. Either you give them back what they entrusted you with (power), by allowing them to choose their rulers, or you refuse to give power back to them.”

The voice accused the regime in the ultra-conservative kingdom, which is battling a wave of Islamist attacks, of forging an alliance with the “infidel” world led by US President George W. Bush.

The authenticity of the tape, which was broadcast on a main Islamist site on the Internet, could not be immediately verified but the voice sounded like that of the Saudi-born top terror mastermind. …

In the latest attack claimed by Al-Qaeda, the US consulate in the Red Sea port city of Jeddah was stormed by gunmen on December 6, killing five non-American staff members and four of the attackers. The Saudi branch of Al-Qaeda, which calls itself the Al-Qaeda Organization in the Arabian Peninsula and has claimed responsibility for a number of deadly attacks over the past 18 months, said it was behind the Jeddah assault.

The voice on the tape paid tribute to the attackers.

“The responsibility for the current situation in Saudi Arabia rests with the regime,” it said in a message which in particular took to task the kingdom’s de facto leader Crown Prince Abdullah bin Abdul Aziz. “In Saudi Arabia, it is the king and not Allah who commands sovereignty and complete obedience,” the voice said. “I advised the government two decades ago to remedy the situation… but it has not changed at all.” …

“When people move to ask for their rights, security forces cannot stop them,” said the tape, which also denounced what it said was American meddling in the affairs of Islamic nations.

“The government in Saudi Arabia has been the target of American interference,” even in the school curriculum, it said. “The Saudi government has forged an alliance with the world of infidelity led by Bush.”

The voice also hurled back the “deviant” term used by Saudi authorities to refer to Islamist militants.

“Who are the supporters of the deviant thinking? Are they the mujahedeen or the accomplices of America in the killing of more than one million children (in Iraq)?”