Al Qaeda uses Web sites to draw recruits, spread propaganda

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LONDON -- Al Qaeda has begun a massive recruitment drive for volunteers to wage war against America and Western-friendly governments in Iraq, Central Asia and throughout the Middle East.

Osama bin Laden's network has also published three electronic-books on its new Web site: two that detail its tactics and intentions in Saudi Arabia and Iraq, and a handbook called "The 39 Steps to Jihad."

The latest publicity drive kicked into high gear yesterday, the eve of the second anniversary of the September 11 attacks, with a series of taped messages from bin Laden and a top lieutenant.

An audiotape purportedly from bin Laden's No. 2, Ayman al-Zawahri, urged Muslims to "devour the Americans as lions do and bury them in the graveyard of Iraq."

It was aired on the Arab satellite channel Al Jazeera, along with what was said to be new video footage of bin Laden and al-Zawahri together.

A voice said to be bin Laden's, in a separate audiotape, praised the suicide hijackers who flew planes into New York's World Trade Center, the Pentagon in Washington and a field in Pennsylvania.

One of the recent Internet books about the May Riyadh bombings, was authored by Sheik Yousef al-Ayyeri, a close friend of bin Laden.

It confirms for the first time that al Qaeda has been conducting operations inside Iraq.

It says: "The number [of those who carried out the bombings] reported by the press is inaccurate. Some of them who were not predestined for martyrdom continue to cause losses to the enemies of Allah, the Americans, in Iraq, and carried out acts of heroism there. ..."