HIGHLIGHTS: An Algerian Daily Receives E-Mail Taped Answers to Questions Sent to Al-Qaeda Internet Web Site||Bu Ghaith Says Attacks Will Include "Afghanistan's Puppet Regime"||According to Source, Bin Laden & Mullah Omar Alive & Going About Their Work|| STORY: The al Qaeda network will strike U.S. targets in America and around the world soon, an al Qaeda spokesman said in an interview published Tuesday. (Read photo caption)

"Our military and intelligence networks are assessing and monitoring new U.S. targets that we will strike in a period of time which is not long," spokesman Sulaiman Abu Ghaith told the Algerian Arabic daily newspaper El Youm.

The United States blames Saudi-born Islamic militant Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda for the Sept. 11 hijacked plane attacks on New York and Washington that killed more than 3,000 people.

El Youm director told Reuters the newspaper received on Monday by e-mail taped answers to questions that had been sent Sunday to al Qaeda's Internet Web site.

"America knows we are men of action and not men of words," he went on, saying that attacks were also being planned against the "puppet government" of Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

Bu Ghaith, in a tape aired last month by Qatar-based al Jazeera television, said al Qaeda was behind a suicide attack on a Tunisian synagogue in April that killed 21 people, including 14 German tourists.

He told El Youm that Washington's war on terrorism since Sept. 11 had not affected al Qaeda's military, intelligence, economic and information infrastructures and reiterated that bin Laden was going about his work.

A spokesman for international forces hunting al Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan has dismissed as "wishful thinking" such claims that the network is still virtually intact.

PHOTO CAPTION

handout issued by the Pakistan authorities, which was published on June 30, 2002 in a local newspaper, shows the pictures of Osama Bin Laden and other Al-Qaeda members. The headline reads 'These people are dangerous religious terrorists' and the headline asks the public to support the search. Names from top left to bottom right, are Osama bin Laden, Aiman al Zawari, Abdul Rehman Yasin, Ibrahim Saleh Mohammad al Yaqub, Sheikh Ahmed Salam Sawadan, Saiful Adil, Abdul Karim Al Nasir, Emad Fayyez, Ahmed Ibrahim , Fahid Mohammad Ali Mussalm, Khalid Shiekh Mohammad, Ali Saeed bin Ali Alhoori, Ahmed Khulfan, Mustafa Mohammad Fazil, Hasan Azuddin, Abdullah Ahmed Abdullah, Fazal Abdullah Mohammad and Ali Khatwa. Photo by Reuters (Handout)
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