Qaida outburst at UN unacceptable

BUCHAREST: A blistering attack on the United Nations by Al-Qaida's second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri was rejected on Thursday by UN Secretary General Ban Ki-moon as "totally false and unacceptable". Ban condemned Zawahiri's statement in a morning get-together with UN staff in Romania's capital Bucharest, where he is attending a three-day NATO summit that is discussing the situation in Afghanistan. "The Secretary General just told UN staff in Romania that the Al-Qaida statement was 'totally false and unacceptable'," a UN spokesman travelling with Ban informed. "The Secretary General was very clear today that United Nations should be seen as a friend of the Muslim world and that he was alarmed by the Al-Qaida accusations," he said. In an online audiofile on Wednesday, Zawahiri said: "The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: it is the one which codified and legitimised the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims' lands." The audio -- released via the monitoring group the IntelCenter -- was the first installment in a two-part series to answer about 100 questions put to Zawahiri, known as Al-Qaida's ideological thinker, via online militant forums.