Ananova :

Osama bin Laden has allegedly denied any involvement in the US terror attacks and pointed the finger at Jews.

His reasoning is that Florida's Jewish community has not forgiven President Bush for his controversial state victory in the US election, an Urdu language newspaper reports.

The interview with the accused terror mastermind appeared in the Karachi daily Ummat, believed to have close connections to Islamic groups in Afghanistan.

The newspaper says it submitted questions for bin Laden to Taliban officials and received written replies.

The paper quoted bin Laden as saying: "Neither I nor my organisation Al-Qaida is involved in the attacks and the US has traced the attackers within America.

"The attackers could be anybody, people who are part of the American system yet rebel against it, or some group that wants to make this century a century of confrontation between Islam and Christianity," he said.

Referring to evidence obtained by American intelligence, bin laden said: "Ask this question to these intelligence agencies that get billions of dollars every year."

Ummat quotes bin Laden as saying: "We are against the American system but not the American people. Islam does not allow killing of innocent people, men, women and children even in the event of war."

He says international freezing of assets and accounts will not affect the working of Al-Qaida "as we have alternate arrangements".

According to the newspaper, bin Laden says Al-Qaida has three alternate financial systems, which are being run separately and independently by those "who love jihad," he said.

Story filed: 16:42 Friday 28th September 2001

Osama bin Laden

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