Make Iraq 'fortress of Islam': Zawahiri  

In an audio file posted on jihadist Internet forums marking the fifth anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion, al-Qaeda number two Ayman al-Zawahiri said that building Iraq as a "fortress of Islam" is the "most important duty" for Muslims."We will only get our rights back with our own hands and not through beggary or fraudulent elections," he said, according to a summary by the SITE monitoring service.In the nearly 16 minute audio message released Thursday, Zawahiri, known as Al-Qaeda's ideological thinker, called on Muslims to fight for creating a greater Muslim state, according to SITE.

It was Zawahiri's second audio file released this month. In the first, posted April 2, he launched a blistering attack on the United Nations."The United Nations is an enemy of Islam and Muslims: it is the one which codified and legitimized the setting up of the state of Israel and its taking over of the Muslims' lands," Zawahiri said in that recorded talk.Zawahiri's latest talk, titled "Five years after the Invasion of Iraq and Decades of Injustice by the Tyrants," contains references to U.S. Iraqi commander General David Petraeus's April 8 testimony to the U.S. Congress, and to a textile worker strike in Egypt on April 6 as evidence that it was a recent recording, according to SITE.The monitoring service said he called on Muslims to make Iraq a "fortress of Islam" and, underscoring the Sunni Muslim orientation of al-Qaeda, he referred to a plot against Iraq by the United States together with Shiite Iran, which he said would lead to the Mideast region exploding.He also discussed the situation in Egypt, saying that Muslims there are deprived of wealth and basic necessities, according to SITE.