From The Australian :

From Correspondents in Paris :

Experts around the world called the videotape from Osama bin Laden a heavy-handed attempt to influence the US election just days before the vote, while warning against dismissing it as just propaganda.

“It’s a very crude but sinister attempt to try to influence the presidential election,” said Paul Wilkinson, chairman of the Centre for the Study of Terrorism and Political Violence at St. Andrews University in Scotland.

“The US authorities must take the threat of violence seriously,” he said in an interview with the BBC shortly after the tape aired last night.
[…]
Montasser el-Zayat, a Cairo-based lawyer who defends Islamic radicals, said the video amounted to an “unprecedented attack on (US President George W.) Bush at a very critical time, before the US elections” on November 2.
[..]
Diaa Rashwan, a Cairo-based expert on extremist Muslim militants, said bin Laden was trying to influence Americans “to give (Democratic presidential candidate John) Kerry their votes, not Bush”.

However, Mr Wilkinson told the BBC it was “too early” to predict whether it would help either candidate.

“It is certainly a more flagrant form of propaganda than we have seen before in relation to the American public, but it hasn’t got a hope of influencing American foreign policy,” he said.

“Whoever wins the US election will continue to wage war on al-Qaida and its affiliates … whoever wins the election is unlikely to cut and run from Iraq because they know that policy would be seen as a defeat.”

British newspapers reflected on the dramatic timing of the message, released four days before the US presidential election. “Bin Laden shocks US” was Saturday’s headline in the Financial Times. “The genie is back in a swirl of dust”, said The Times.

“Bin Laden has become to Bush what Saddam Hussein was to the president’s father - a gloating survivor of US foreign policy,” wrote The Times’ Chris Ayres.

On websites devoted to extremist Muslim comment, contributors reacted with glee to the tape, saying it was proof bin Laden was alive and a “slap” at America.