An audio tape featuring a message believed to have been recorded by terror mastermind Osama bin Laden has been broadcast on al-Jazeera.

Bin Laden uses the broadcast to call on the people of Europe to urge their governments to pull out of Afghanistan.

The al-Qaeda leader said Western governments were wrong to attack the country in response to the 9/11 attacks in the US.

Addressing "the peoples" of Europe, bin Laden said he alone was responsible for the atrocities, and neither the government nor the people of Afghanistan knew about them.

He said: "Before Afghanistan's wounds had healed and their grief had ended, they were invaded without right by your unjust governments without stopping to think about or reflect upon Bush's claim that this invasion was a response to the events of the 11th," he said.

"The events of Manhattan were a response to the American-Israeli coalition's murder of our people in Palestine and Lebanon, and it was I who was responsible for 9/11. I stress that all Afghans, both government and people, had no knowledge of these events."

Bin Laden compared a number of current and former European leaders, including Tony Blair, Gordon Brown, Nicolas Sarkozy and Jose Maria Aznar - who lost the Spanish general election in 2004 in the wake of the Madrid bombings - to "Third World leaders" who "love to take refuge in the shadow of the White House".

The recording is the fourth release attributed to bin Laden since the start of September.

"It is better for you to restrain your politicians who are thronging the steps of the White House and work diligently to remove oppression from the oppressed," he said.

Bin Laden is believed to be hiding in the remote and lawless mountains separating Pakistan from Afghanistan.

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