Qaeda chief Zawahiri accuses US of `plotting` Morsi ouster

Cairo: Al-Qaeda chief Ayman al-Zawahiri accused the US of "plotting" with the Egyptian military, secularists and Christians to overthrow Egypt`s Islamist president Mohamed Morsi, in an audio recording posted on militant Islamist forums.

Speaking of the July 3 military coup, Zawahiri, himself an Egyptian, said: "Crusaders and secularists and the Americanised army have converged ... With Gulf money and American plotting to topple Mohamed Morsi`s government." Zawahiri accused Egypt`s Coptic Christian minority of supporting the Islamist president`s ouster to attain "a Coptic state stripped from Egypt`s south." The recording contained the militant leader`s first public comments on Morsi`s ouster. PTI