DUBAI, March 19 (Reuters) - Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden urged Somalis in a new audio tape on Thursday to topple moderate new president Sheikh Sharif Ahmed, who is already struggling to deal with insurgents in the lawless Horn of Africa country.
Ahmed, a moderate Islamist elected earlier this year in the 15th attempt to form a central government, is struggling to deal with various insurgent groups who control swathes of territory.
"The war which has been taking place on your soil these past years is a war between Islam and the international crusade," bin Laden said, according to the group's own English translation of the Arabic-language tape.
"These sorts of presidents are the surrogates of our enemies and their authority is null and void in the first place, and as Sheikh Sharif is one of them, he must be dethroned and fought."
A surge in al Qaeda-linked attacks against Ahmed and his government would intensify a two-year-old insurgency led by Islamist groups against the government and its foreign backers.
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The violence has already uprooted more than a million Somalis from their homes and a third of the population depends on food aid. Western security services fear the failed Horn of Africa country could become a base for al Qaeda-linked militants.
Opposition leader Sheikh Hassan Dahir Aweys this month dismissed Somalia's new president as another stooge of neighbouring Ethiopia and a traitor to Islamists, a message echoed by the Saudi-born al Qaeda leader.
"My Muslim brothers in Somalia: you must beware of the initiatives which wear the dress of Islam and the religious institutions even as they contradict the rules of Islamic shariah, like the initiative attributed to some of the clerics of Somalia which gives Sheikh Sharif six months to implement Islamic shariah," he said.
"The obligation is to fight the apostate government, not stop fighting it."
Reuters was not immediately able to verify the authenticity of the tape, titled "Fight on, champions of Somalia", but the voice sounded like that of bin Laden.
In his second message posted in less than a week, bin Laden also called on Muslims to help the Somalis in their jihad.
More than 60 messages have been broadcast by bin Laden, his second-in-command Ayman al-Zawhiri and their allies since the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.
In his previous message, bin Laden accused moderate Arab leaders of pitting the West against Muslims.
