Xinhua - English

BEIJING, Feb. 15 (Xinhuanet) -- The Saudi Arabian arm of Al Qaida has called for attacks on U.S. oil and natural gas sources across the world.

The call appeared Wednesday in the Arabian Peninsula's e-magazine, Sawt al-Jihad (Voice of Holy War), used by religious militants.

It said that targets should not be limited to the Middle East. Canada, Venezuela and Mexico as U.S. oil suppliers are all on the list.

"Targeting oil interests includes production wells, export pipelines, oil terminals and tankers and that can reduce U.S. oil inventory, forcing it to take decisions it has been avoiding for a long time and confuse and strangle its economy," it said.

The call said "cutting oil supplies to the United States, or at least curtailing it, would contribute to the ending of the American occupation of Iraq and Afghanistan."

Canadian government officials have not immediately responded to requests for comment. Canada is the biggest exporter of crude oil to the United States, followed by Mexico, Saudi Arabia and Venezuela.

Mexico on Wednesday claimed that its crude oil installations were safe. It had tightened security around its Gulf of Mexico oil rigs since 2005 in line with international norms, a spokeswoman at state-run oil monopoly Pemex said.

The Saudi Arabian arm of Al-Qa'ida was behind a failed February 2006 attack on the world's largest oil processing plant the Abqaiq facility in Saudi Arabia. It also was behind the 2002 attack on a French oil tanker that killed one person in the Gulf of Aden.

The group had warned that it was planning major operations aimed at driving Western interests out of the Arabian Peninsula last week.

(Agencies)

MEXICO CITY, Feb. 14 (Xinhua) -- The Mexican government is examining the origin and truthfulness of alleged threats from the terrorist network Al Qaida, to nations that supply oil to the United States, the president's public relations coordinator said on Wednesday.

The official, Maximiliano Cortazar, said he did not wish to anticipate what the nation's final response would be.

An organization calling itself the Arabian Peninsula Al Qaida Organization made the threat on a web page of the electronic newspaper Saut al Jihad (Voice of the Holy War). The message called on supporters to attack oil facilities in Mexico, Venezuelaand Canada, because they supply oil to the United States.