Recorded message may be bin Laden

CAIRO, Egypt -- In an audiotaped message aired across the Arab world Tuesday, a voice purported to be that of Osama bin Laden praised terrorist strikes in Bali and Moscow and threatened Western nations over any attack on Iraq.\nIf bin Laden's voice is authenticated, his references to recent events would be the clearest indication the terrorist mastermind of the Sept. 11 attacks survived U.S. airstrikes in Afghanistan last year.\nThe speaker on the tape broadcast on Al-Jazeera television referred to the Oct. 12 Bali bombings, the killing last month of a Marine in Kuwait, the bombing of a French oil tanker last month off Yemen and the Chechen hostage taking in Moscow, saying the attacks were "undertaken by sons who are zealous in the defense of their religion."\nHe said those attacks and others were "only a reaction in response to what (President) Bush, the pharaoh of the age, is doing by killing our sons in Iraq and what America's ally Israel is doing, bombarding houses with women and old people and children inside with American planes."\n"Our people in Palestine are being killed, are being subjected to the worse kind of suffering for almost a century now," the speaker said. "If we defend our people in Palestine the world is disturbed and allied against Muslims under the banner of combating terrorism."\nThe speaker then castigated U.S. allies that have joined the war against terrorism, specifically Britain, France, Italy, Canada, Germany and Australia.\nAfter listing those countries, he warned: "If you don't like looking at your dead...so remember our dead, including the children in Iraq."\nIn Washington, intelligence officials were evaluating the tape to verify bin Laden's voice, according to officials who spoke on condition of anonymity.