Al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden appears to be a man weakened under pressure in his latest message, which is addressed directly to the American people, analysts said yesterday.
In the message released to mark the eighth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States that killed almost 3,000 people, bin Laden urged Americans to pressure the White House to end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Titled Message to the American People, the video - released by the As-Sahab media branch of Al-Qaeda - features a still image of bin Laden and an audio statement, said the IntelCentre US monitoring group.
In the message bin Laden says that US President Barack Obama is "powerless" to halt the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and must rethink his policy on Israel, accusing "neo-conservatives" of maintaining a grip on the White House.
Analysts said the latest message appeared to be less strident than the Al-Qaeda leader's previous diatribes against the West, and the US in particular."There is a relatively new change, there is a transformation ... He is not giving any warnings and is seeking to justify the September 11 attacks," said Diaa Rashwan, a leading expert on militant groups.
"For the first time, he didn't mention or praise the martyrs who perpetrated the September 11 attacks," said Mr Rashwan, who is deputy head of Al-Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo.
The latest audio, he added, comes three weeks after Al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri released a message about the situation in the Swat valley in Pakistan during which he made an unusual number of religious references calling for the unity of the fighters.
"All this demonstrates clearly that Al-Qaeda is being affected by developments on the ground," said Mr Rashwan, adding that for the first time bin Laden speaks positively of three US presidents.
"He mentions Obama's address to the Muslim world in Cairo on June 3, he evokes Jimmy Carter's stance towards the Palestinians and he says that Obama will have the same destiny as John Kennedy (who was assassinated in 1963) if he follows a different policy from the neo-conservatives," Mr Rashwan explained.