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DUBAI : Al-Qaeda second-in-command Ayman al-Zawahiri said on Tuesday the group is preparing a "precise response" to Britain's decision to bestow a knighthood on author Salman Rushdie.
"I say to (Britain's Queen) Elizabeth and (former British Prime Minister Tony) Blair that your message has reached us and we are in the process of preparing for you a precise response," Zawahiri said in an audio recording posted on an Internet website often used by Islamic militants.
Rushdie was knighted by the queen last month in her birthday honours list, bringing condemnation from a number of Muslim countries and organisations.
The author is accused by some Muslims of blaspheming Islam in his novel "The Satanic Verses," which triggered an international furore when it was first published in 1988.
The Indian-born Rushdie, 59, was forced to go into hiding for a decade after then Iranian supreme leader Aytatollah Ruhollah Khomeini issued a 1989 death sentence over the book.
Khomeini's successor, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said in January 2005 he still believed the British novelist was an apostate whose killing would be authorised by Islam.
Following Rushdie's knighting, Iran said the death sentence still stands.
"The stance of the Islamic Republic of Iran with regard to this issue has not changed from what was put forward by the Imam Khomeini," foreign ministry spokesman Mohammad Ali Hosseini said.
In the audio message entitled "Malicious Britain and its Indian Slaves", Zawahiri said Britain was hypocritical for giving Rushdie the knighthood under the banner of freedom of speech.
"Why don't they honour the British historian David Irving? The Queen of Britain ... did not honour him because she cannot rebel against the Jews, who are her masters," he said.
Irving spent 13 months in jail in Austria following a conviction there for Holocaust denial.
Zawahiri also warned Britain's new prime minister, Gordon Brown, to alter his state's foreign policy.
"The policy of your predecessor (Blair) has brought tragedy and defeat upon you. Not only in Afghanistan and Iraq but also in the centre of London. If you do not understand this lesson, then we are prepared to repeat it to you," he said.
A spokesman for British Prime Minister Gordon Brown's Downing Street office told AFP, however, that Britain "will not allow terrorists to undermine the British way of life."
Four Al-Qaeda-inspired British nationals blew themselves up on the London transit system on July 7, 2005, killing themselves and 52 commuters.
On Monday, a British court found four men guilty over a failed Islamist plot to set off bombs in London two weeks after the 2005 bombing.
At the end of June, just two days after Brown took over from Blair, two car bombs were discovered in central London. A flaming Jeep Cherokee slammed into Glasgow airport's main terminal the following day.
On Sunday, newly appointed security and counter-terrorism minister Sir Alan West said Britain faces a 15-year battle against Islamist extremism.
West told the Sunday Telegraph that Britain was facing its greatest threat yet.
"This is not a quick thing. I believe it will take 10 to 15 years. But I think it can be done as long as we as a nation apply ourselves to it and it's done across the board," he was quoted as saying.
His comments came as Brown called on countries to cooperate more in sharing information on potential terror suspects.
In his audio message, Zawahiri also praised an attack last month on UN peacekeepers in southern Lebanon in which six soldiers were killed.
"This operation... came as a response against those invading Crusader forces who were occupying a beloved part of the land of Islam," he said.
Zawahiri also urged Hamas in the Palestininan territories to wage jihad against Israel and called on Muslims in Pakistan to resist their "corrupt" president, Pervez Musharraf, by offering moral and financial support to militants in neighbouring Afghanistan. - AFP/de
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