Rome, Italy - The Vatican on Thursday rejected an audiotaped accusation from Osama bin Laden that Pope Benedict XVI was leading a "new crusade" against Muslims, but Italian security officials were concerned about the threats included in bin Laden's new message.
"These accusations are absolutely unfounded," the Rev. Federico Lombardi, the pope's chief spokesman, said in a telephone interview. "There is nothing new in this, and it doesn't have any particular significance for us."
Benedict XVI is scheduled to make his first visit as pope to the United States from April 15-20, with stops in New York and Washington. The Secret Service and the New York City Police Department, responsible for the pope's security on the trip, had no comment on the bin Laden audiotape.
Paul J. Browne, a deputy police commissioner in New York, said in an e-mailed statement that the department "has been working closely with the United States Secret Service to provide the highest level of protection possible for the pope during his visit to New York."
The new audio message attributed to bin Laden was released Wednesday night and was addressed to "the intelligent ones in the European Union."
It was posted on a militant Web site on Wednesday, and an English transcription was distributed Thursday by the SITE Intelligence Group in Bethesda, Md., which tracks Qaida postings on the Internet.
The audiotape listed broad grievances, but specifically mentioned the pope, and coincided with the busiest week of the year at the Vatican, the week leading up to Easter Sunday. The pope will appear at several public events, including the annual Good Friday procession of the Stations of the Cross at the Colosseum.
In the five-minute message, the speaker said there would be a "severe" reaction against the publication in Europe of cartoons that many Muslims consider offensive to the Prophet Muhammad.
He said the cartoons -- one reprinted in February in Denmark, more than two years after they were first published there -- "came in the framework of a new crusade in which the pope of the Vatican has played a large, lengthy role."
Without naming any specific action or target, the speaker said, "The response will be what you see and not what you hear, and let our mothers bereave us if we do not make victorious our messenger of God."
Lombardi dismissed the accusations, noting that the pope had condemned the cartoons several times and stressed that "religion must be respected."