Oust invaders

A new audiotape attributed to Saddam Hussein aired on Al Jazeera TV yesterday urges his supporters continue the uprising against US occupation forces and keep control of former state property to use in the rebellion. The voice said the tape was made Sunday.

"Some people lost their sense of balance during the war... and afterwards. The sense of balance will not be restored except with those who struggle in the name of the principles that will satisfy the nation, people and God.

"Only the actions of the faithful who struggled and fought can evict the invaders," the audiotape message said. It was dated July 28.

In another audiotape broadcast on Tuesday, the ousted Iraqi leader purportedly said his two sons, Qusay and Uday, killed by U.S. forces last week, died as martyrs and vowed America would be defeated.

The CIA said it believed Tuesday's tape was almost certainly authentic.

Uday and Qusay were killed in a gunbattle in the northern city of Mosul along with a 14-year-old-boy thought to be Qusay's son and one other man.

The message, broadcast by the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera satellite television station, was a rambling speech apparently intended to encourage and instruct his supporters in the guerrilla war against the US occupation. Saddam has been on the run for three and a half months since the Americans captured Baghdad.

"The feeling of defeat and bitterness might lead some people to commit treason... instead of being a gun pointed at the enemy," said the voice, which sounded like Saddam,

"I ask people to keep the properties of the country and the party until the situation changes or to donate their value to the glorious resistance," the voice said.

An earlier message purportedly from Saddam was broadcast Tuesday by al-Arabiya, another Arab satellite broadcaster. That tape acknowledge the death of his two sons, Odai and Qusai, who were gunned down in firefight with American forces in Mosul. The CIA said that tape most likely was authentic.

In it, Saddam said he was glad of his sons' deaths because they had become martyrs.

But in yesterday's tape, which was impossible to authenticate immediately, the voice had clearly moved beyond mourning for the once-feared and brutal sons, and issued a call to battle.

"Our faith is great that God will support us, and that one day the occupation army will falter and that victory is possible at any moment. We must not let things slip away and our situation become desperate," the voice said.

"The balance has shifted, after the military confrontations (with insurgents) and this has not changed. They (Americans) will not be able to stop this."

"I say that this shift in balance has happened because of the great mujahedeen and faithful fighters who have worked and struggled to confront the occupation and throw the invaders outside Iraq so that Iraq can return to its normal state after that."

US officials have reported in the past several days that American forces were twice close to capturing Saddam, once in the raid in which his sons were killed, and again in a raid on a farm house near Tikrit where the military was seeking Saddam's new chief of security.

But on Thursday. the American military in Baghdad seemed to back away from optimistic reports that Saddam's capture was imminent, saying instead that it was inevitable.

It was the fourth recording from Saddam to be broadcast over the Arab satellite channels since July 14.