Washington: A recent letter attributed by the US to top al-Qaeda official Ayman al-Zawahri is a fresh sign that the militant network is facing financial troubles, a senior US Treasury official said.
"There is a passage in there where Zawahri says to Zarqawi, I'm out of money. Send me money. I don't have any money," said Stuart Levey, undersecretary for terrorism and financial intelligence, referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the leader of al-Qaeda in Iraq.
"I'm a glass-half-full kind of guy, so I look at that as a good thing. Zawahri's out of money. Glass-half-empty people would say, well, he thinks Zarqawi has got so much money he's got it to spare," he said in a speech at the Heritage Foundation think tank.
US intelligence officials released the purported letter from Zawahri to Zarqawi last month, but al-Qaeda's wing in Iraq rejected it as a fabrication.
The letter says Zawahri telling Zarqawi, "We need a payment while new financial supply lines are being opened. So, if you are capable of sending a payment of approximately one hundred thousand dollars, we'll be very grateful to you."
US security officials have repeatedly said that they are confident of the letter's authenticity, but some US terrorism experts say its style and some of the content including the request for money made them concerned it might be a fake.
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