Bin Laden video may signal new attacks

By Mark Trevelyan, Security Correspondent

LONDON (Reuters) - Abandoning his Kalashnikov and dyeing his beard from grey to black, Osama bin Laden presents a new image to the world in a video that makes no specific threats but may be a signal for new al Qaeda attacks.

In a half-hour address released four days before the sixth anniversary of the September 11 attacks on the United States, bin Laden lurched between history lesson and sermon, urging Americans to ditch capitalist democracy and embrace Islam if they want to end the war in Iraq.

Despite its lack of specific warnings, several security analysts said bin Laden's first video for nearly three years could be a signal to his followers to launch new strikes.

"Osama's call to the Americans to convert to Islam is indicative of an al Qaeda attack on U.S. targets. Before the Prophet (Mohammad) attacked his enemies he urged his opponents to embrace Islam," Rohan Gunaratna, a leading authority on militant Islamism, told Reuters.

"Osama is presenting Koranic injunctions before planning to attack."

Abdel Bari Atwan, London-based editor-in-chief of the Arabic newspaper al-Quds, said: "Maybe this is a warning that an attack could happen soon ... This is a sort of rallying video. Maybe there is a message to his followers: go ahead and do what you want to do."

Atwan, who has interviewed bin Laden, said the video marked a significant shift in the al Qaeda leader's style and image.

By trimming and dyeing his beard and ditching his military camouflage jacket for Arabic robes, bin Laden was trying to portray himself as a new, mature figure -- the spiritual leader of al Qaeda, Atwan said.

Others said the makeover was bizarre.

"It makes him, a man who claims he wants to be a martyr, look vain and ridiculous," said M.J. Gohel of the Asia-Pacific Foundation, a London think-tank.

LONG SILENCE

Bin Laden did not explain his long silence, which had prompted speculation he was too sick or too tightly holed up in a hiding place somewhere along the Pakistan-Afghan border to be able to make and smuggle out a message.

Amr El-Choubaki, a Cairo-based expert on Islamist movements, said the call for the United States to convert to Islam was a sign he was not in a position to name more achievable objectives.

"It's clear his influence within the al Qaeda organization ... is now limited," he said.

But Mohamed el-Sayed Said, deputy director of the Ahram Centre for Political and Strategic Studies in Cairo, said the video, despite the lack of specific warnings, was "much more threatening this time".