Al-Qaeda's number two has taunted George Bush, the US president, in a new video posted on the internet.

 

According to the US-based Site Institute, which said on Saturday it had seen the video, Ayman al-Zawahri sarcastically referred to a congressional bill that ties funding for the US effort in Iraq to a timetable for troops to withdraw.

"This bill will deprive us of the opportunity to destroy the American forces which we have caught in a historic trap," al-Zawahri said, adding the bill was evidence of American "failure and frustration".

 

He did not mention the vetoing of the bill last Thursday by Bush.

Al-Zawahri also congratulated Bush "on the success of his security plan" in Iraq and invited him to celebrate with "a glass of juice, but in the cafeteria of the Iraqi parliament in the middle of the Green Zone", referring to the site of a recent suicide bombing.

 

"We aren't waging jihad to lift oppression from the Muslims only, we are waging jihad to lift oppression from all of mankind" Ayman al-Zawahri, al-Qaeda deputy

The Site Institute said al-Zawahri also claimed al-Qaeda fighters in Iraq were getting "closer to victory over their enemy" despite continuing sectarian violence.

 

Al-Zawahri also spoke on a number of other topics in the video, including fighting in Afghanistan, Chechnya, Algeria, and Somalia.

 

He also referred to Saudi Arabia, the recent constitutional reforms in Egypt and the US Pentagon's release of the confessions of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in Pakistan in March 2003 and is said to be al-Qaeda's number three and who was allegedly behind the September 11 attack on the US World Trade Centre.