BAGHDAD (AP) - Al-Qaida’s deputy leader sought to bolster the terror network’s main arm in Iraq in a new video released Thursday, calling on Muslims to rally behind it at a time when the group is on the defensive, faced with U.S. offensives and splits with other insurgent groups.

Ayman al-Zawahri defended the Islamic State of Iraq - the insurgent umbrella group headed by al-Qaida - against critics among Islamic militant groups, saying it was a vanguard for fighting off the U.S. military and eventually establishing a “caliphate” of Islamic rule across the region.

Al-Zawahri, the top deputy of Osama bin Laden, called on Muslims to follow a two-pronged strategy: work at home to topple “corrupt” Arab regimes and join al-Qaida’s “jihad,” or holy war, in Iraq, Afghanistan and Somalia to fight and train “to prepare for the next jihad.”

The Egyptian militant did not mention last week’s failed car bombing attempts in Britain, which British authorities are investigating for al-Qaida links. That suggested the video, posted Thursday on an Islamic militant Web site, was made before the events in London and Glasgow.

Al-Qaida’s declaration of the Islamic State of Iraq last year was a dramatic move aimed at staking out its leadership of Iraq’s insurgency. Allying itself with several smaller Iraqi Sunni insurgent groups, it presented the Islamic State as an alternative government within Iraq, claiming to hold territory.

The move quickly met resistance. Some Islamic extremist clerics in the Arab world said it was too soon to declare an Islamic state because the Islamic law qualifications were not yet met and argued that a true Islamic state is not viable while there are still U.S. forces in Iraq.    …..more