US rejects bin Laden truce offer

The United States has rejected a truce offer from Al-Qaeda chief Osama bin Laden, and despite a threat of more attacks on US soil, authorities said they will not raise the national alert level.

"We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business," the White House responded Thursday to bin Laden's truce offer.

The terrorist mastermind made the proposal in an audiotape broadcast by the Al-Jazeera satellite television network, and authenticated by the CIA, in which bin Laden warned of pending attacks in the "heartland" of the United States.

A Department of Homeland Security spokesman told The New York Times that there were no plans to raise the US alert level, which now stands at "yellow," or "elevated," the middle of five stages.

Bin Laden also offered a "long-term truce" if Washington withdrew its military presence from Iraq and Afghanistan -- the latter his former safe haven until US forces ousted his Taliban allies after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

Vice President Dick Cheney on Thursday said the message showed that the terrorist network had been driven "underground" and was now unable to produce video messages, but warned the group was still lethal.

Asked about bin Laden's truce offer, Cheney told Fox News Channel that it sounded like "a ploy" and that "this is not an organization that is ever going to sit down and sign a truce. I think you have to destroy them. It's the only way to deal with them."

While the vice president did not vouch for the authenticity of the tape, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) analysts believe it was bin Laden's voice on the tape, according to a CIA official who requested anonymity.

Bin Laden, whom some US intelligence officials say is holed up in a remote mountainous region on the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan, had not been heard from since another recorded message in December 2004.

In April 2004, a few weeks after the Marid train bombings that killed 191 people, bin Laden in a videotaped message also offered a truce to Europeans if they stopped attacking Muslims.

US officials were unsure when the latest message had been recorded, and Cheney said another question was whether it had been "pieced together" from past statements.

Asked whether killing bin Laden would lessen the threat from al-Qaeda, Cheney said "we'd still have problems" with the network because it does not rely on a centralized leadership.

Cheney also warned in a speech right as bin Laden's message was broadcast that while "the enemy that struck on 9/11 is weakened and fractured, it is still lethal."

"Obviously no one can guarantee that we won't be hit again, but our nation has been protected by more than luck," he said in a reference to the avalanche of security measures imposed after September 11 in every major US city.

"It is no accident that we have not been hit for more than four years," Cheney added.

While some of Bush's Republicans and many opposition Democrats have criticized some of those measures, there was unanimity in rejecting any talk of truce with Al-Qaeda across the US political landscape.

"We do not negotiate with terrorists. We put them out of business. We must not stop until they are defeated," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.

"The terrorists started this war. And the president made it clear that we will end it at a time and place of our choosing."

Democratic party chairman Howard Dean told Fox News: "You don't negotiate with terrorists. These people have killed 3,000 Americans, there is no truce with Al-Qaeda, and there never will be. You can't trust them."

The message came as Pakistani authorities sought to identify four suspected Al-Qaeda members killed in a US air strike last week that angered many in Pakistan. The White House has refused to comment on the attack.

One of the dead was a son-in-law of bin Laden's main deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, and another was a bomb expert on the US wanted list, according to US television network ABC and the Pakistani newspaper Dawn. Both quoted Pakistani intelligence.

Pakistani authorities confirmed that some foreigners were among the 18 people killed in the attack and General Peter Pace, chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, said Thursday "I have no reason to doubt what the Pakistan government is saying."