Support for al Qaeda waning, UK think-tank says

LONDON, Sep 8 (Reuters) Five years after it carried out the attacks of September 11, al Qaeda remains a powerful organisation but its support is waning, a leading British think-tank said on Friday.

The US-led response to the attacks has ''seriously undermined'' the group's ability to recruit, communicate and fund itself, but has also inadvertently enhanced al Qaeda's image, the Royal Institute of International Affairs said in a report.

''Five years after September 11, a mixed picture of al Qaeda's fortunes is emerging,'' the report's author Dr Maha Azzam said.

''Although its image as a powerful terrorist organization has been enhanced, its leaders hide in caves and have lost the broad support of Muslims in the Arab world who oppose its terror tactics and its justification of violence in the name of Islam.'' Azzam said al Qaeda faced ''a very serious challenge to its legitimacy and potential popularity, which is being undermined, somewhat unexpectedly, from within the Muslim world itself.'' She cited the electoral successes of mainstream Islamist groups like the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt as evidence that al Qaeda was losing out to non-violent Islamist movements in a battle for support.

''It is now clear that al Qaeda has failed to transform itself into a widespread movement,'' the report said.

''It ... echoes the concerns of Muslim majorities but has achieved diminishing support for its tactics, despite the emergence of supporting cells over several years in states as divergent as Morocco, Saudi Arabia, Indonesia and Britain.'' Azzam said al Qaeda attacks in Saudi Arabia and Jordan had backfired because they had killed Muslims and alienated many in the Islamic world.

The group's former leader in Iraq, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, claimed responsibility for the bombing of three hotels in Jordan last year in which 60 people, mostly Muslims, were killed.

Al Qaeda has also been blamed for deadly attacks in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere in the Islamic world.

Azzam said one of al Qaeda's biggest successes was in convincing people to accept there was a link between terrorism and Western foreign policy.

''This is likely to affect and challenge policy-makers for some time to come,'' Azzam said.

Reuters PB GC1008