An Australian newspaper claimed yesterday to have a tape of Saddam Hussein recorded just days ago, urging Iraqis to rise up against the coalition forces occupying their country.
A tired-sounding voice calls on Iraq's people to stand together in a new underground war against the occupying forces.
"Through this secret means I am talking to you from inside great Iraq and I say to you, the main task for you, Arab and Kurd, Shiite and Sunni, Muslim and Christian and the whole Iraqi people of all religions, your main task is to kick the enemy out from our country," the speaker said.
"It sounds as if we have to go back to the secret style of struggle that we began our life with."
The Sydney Morning Herald said the audio tape was passed to their reporter by unidentified Iraqis outside Baghdad's Palestine Hotel who had failed to find correspondents from Gulf satellite TV news station Al-Jazeera.
Al-Jazeera has been the conduit for earlier tapes from Saddam, whose last claimed sighting was on April 18 in the streets of Baghdad.
When the reporter's translator pointed towards the hotel and the security cordon manned by coalition forces, one of the men handed the tape over to the translator, saying it was his duty, as an Iraqi, to make sure the tape was made public.
The translator said the men spoke with the distinctive accents of Saddam's Tikrit region.
The paper played the tape to more than a dozen Iraqis, including a judge, a law professor and a former Saddam associate, all of whom said it sounded authentic.
The tape has been passed to US authorities.
Saddam's fate is not known. He was targeted by cruise missiles on March 20 in the opening salvo of the war. As US troops converged on Baghdad, American jets dropped bombs on the al-Mansour neighbourhood on April 7 after Saddam was reportedly seen there.
Some Iraqis claimed to have seen Saddam in the Azamiyah district two days later.
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