CAIRO - Al Qaeda's number two accused the Palestinian Hamas of selling out by agreeing to respect past peace deals with Israel, according to a recording broadcast Sunday by Al-Jazeera satellite channel.
Ayman al-Zawahri lashed out at the group for making its most concrete commitment to a two-state solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict when it agreed in February during a meeting in Saudi Arabia to "respect'' earlier peace deals with Israel. An expert in the terror group's messages described the Egyptian militant's comments were his harshest to date about the Palestinian group.
"Hamas went on a picnic with the American devil and its Saudi Agent,'' al-Zawahri said.
He mocked Saudi King Abdullah, who proposed the Arab peace plan in 2002 when he was crown prince, calling it the "initiative that was dictated to him'' by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman.
Al-Zawahri's recording was broadcast just weeks ahead of a summit later in March Saudi Arabia that is expected to relaunch a 2002 Saudi initiative for peace with Israel.
The militant, deputy to the terror network's leader Osama bin Laden, said Hamas should not back down at a time when he claimed the U.S. was facing difficulties in Afghanistan and Iraq.
"O you sensible ones, why all this retreat in front of the American scheme? America is being defeated in Afghanistan and Iraq,'' al-Zawahri said.
Al-Zawahri criticized Iraq's security conference which was held March 10 in Baghdad, the Al-Jazeera anchorman said. He quoted the militant as describing the conference as "an attempt to find an exit for the Americans,'' but the channel did not play that part of the recording.
The Qatar-based television channel broadcast the message just minutes before the Israeli prime minister and the moderate Palestinian president finished a meeting -- their second in a month.
Hamas dismissed the message as "a bad statement'' and said that al-Zawahri had no right to judge the group.
"I think he does not understand the situation here very well. We still believe in struggle, but we also think that the political track is a part of resistance,'' Hamas government spokesman in Gaza, Ghazi Hamad, told The Associated Press.
Moderate Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas obtained Hamas commitment on previous agreements with Israel from top leader Khaled Mashaal during talks in Mecca, Saudi Arabia where they agreed to a power-sharing deal between their factions.
"Today, in the time of deals, the leadership of Hamas has given up most of Palestine to the Jews ... Hamas' leadership has finally caught (late Egyptian President Anwar) Sadat's train of humiliation and surrender.''
Egypt, under Sadat's leadership in 1979, was the first Arab country to make peace with Israel. Jordan is the only other Arab country to have established full relations with the Jewish state.
Before Sunday's talks with Abbas, Prime Minister Ehud Olmert said he was ready to "treat seriously'' the 2002 initiative calling for a comprehensive peace agreement between Israel and the Arab world in exchange for a full Israeli withdrawal from lands captured in the 1967 Mideast War.
But Olmert has said that Hamas position under the Mecca accord doesn't go far enough. By failing to recognize Israel and renounce violence, Hamas also falls short of Western countries' requirements for lifting their financial boycott of the Palestinians, in place following Hamas January 2006 electoral victory.
On Friday, Abbas gave the Hamas prime minister, Ismael Haniyeh, two weeks to form the government. Selecting the interior minister has been a key sticking point.
Al-Jazeera did not say how it obtained the audio recording and its authenticity could not be immediately verified.
"The comments about Hamas were Zawahri's strongest criticisms of the group to date,'' said Ben Venzke of the U.S.-based IntelCenter, a U.S. government contractor that studies al-Qaida messaging.
Excerpts broadcast by Al-Jazeera were less than 10 minutes, but Venzke said that the entire recording was 21 minutes long and that it appeared to be authentic, noting that the video with a still photo of al-Zawahri, accompanied by an audio recording, had the logo of Al-Sahab, al-Qaida's media wing.
After Al-Jazeera began broadcasting the recording, a message appeared on an Islamist Web site that acts as a clearinghouse for militant messages saying that it would soon issue a statement by al-Zawahri. By midnight local time, the message had not been posted on the site.
Al-Jazeera did not give a date when it was made, but an anchorman said that al-Zawahri praised the attack in Afghanistan that occurred while U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney was there on Feb. 28.
Al-Zawahri appeared in more than a dozen recordings posted on the Internet and obtained by Arab satellite channels last year. This is his fifth recording this year.
In late 2005, just weeks before Hamas swept the polls in Palestinian legislative elections, al-Zawahri lashed out at Islamist groups for participating in electoral politics, saying that they will never win at the ballot box.
That recording came just after Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood organization made its best ever showing in parliamentary elections winning nearly a fifth of seats. His message appeared directed primarily at Hamas, which is an offshoot of the Egyptian Islamist group.
