Iraq Insurgents to Obama: "Withdraw Your Forces"

DUBAI -- Insurgents in Iraq have urged U.S. president-elect Barack Obama to adopt a policy of neutrality in the war-torn country and to withdraw U.S. troops from there and other Muslim countries.

"On behalf of my brothers in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, and Chechnya, I offer you what is better for you and us: you return to your previous era of neutrality, you withdraw your forces, and you return to your homes," said an audiotape attributed to Omar al-Baghdadi, head of the self-proclaimed Islamic State of Iraq.

The tape, whose authenticity could not be verified, was addressed to the "New Rulers of the White House and All Their Allies, Presidents of Christian Countries."

It was made available by SITE Intelligence Group, which monitors Islamist web sites. Because it does not mention Obama by name, SITE said it assumed the recording was made prior to the U.S. elections on Tuesday.

The message also said the "unjust" wars launched in Muslim countries were the "principal cause of the collapse of the economic giant."

Earlier this week, the Islamic Army in Iraq, an ultra-conservative Sunni Muslim insurgent group, said Obama would not do anything beneficial for Iraq.

A message posted on the IAI website and dated Tuesday, the day of the U.S. presidential election, said, "We should not forget that no president is able to cross the line against American interests; rather, they all have to race to achieve them.

"Therefore, the new president will not intend to offer what is beneficial to our countries," said the message, also published by SITE.

"Whatever the results may be, the world today desperately needs to change the unjust American foreign policy that threatens stability and world peace. It harms the peoples of the world, and damages America and its reputation in the globe.

"It is in the interest of the new American administration to move away from the game of creating disasters and blaming them on an invisible enemy … and has fictitious titles and banners such as war on terror -- and supporting them for the goal of plundering wealth and striking Islam."