Sept. 2 (Bloomberg) -- Al-Qaeda's second-in-command, Ayman Ayman al-Zawahiri, issued a videotape today urging Americans to become Muslims, a suggestion President George W. Bush's administration called ``an attempt to subjugate.''

The 41-minute tape was posted on an Islamic militant Web site, the Associated Press reported. Al-Zawahiri appears with a man introduced as Adam Yehiye Gadahn, an American who the FBI believes attended al-Qaeda training camps in Pakistan and served as a translator for the group, AP said.

Christie Parell, a White House spokeswoman, said the terrorist group's ``latest tape, if authentic, reflects al- Qaeda's continued attempt to subjugate the world under its twisted view of Islam, which labels as enemies and infidels those who do not have the same beliefs.'' The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency is reviewing the tape and has no reason to doubt its authenticity, an intelligence official said.

Al-Zawahiri and Gadahn are featured on a split screen, not together, and both wear white turbans and robes. The two appeared together in a video July 7 marking the one-year anniversary of the bombings of the London transit system. Today's tape was aired nine days before the fifth anniversary of the Sept. 11 al-Qaeda terrorist attacks on the U.S.

Gadahn, who spoke for much of the video, said he wanted to correct the image Americans have of Islam, AP reported. ```We invite all Americans and unbelievers to Islam,''' he said, according to AP.

He described the West as the civilization which enslaved Africa, slaughtered American Indians and dropped bombs on Tokyo, Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Iraqi city of Fallujah, AP said.

Bush, in his weekly radio address earlier today, spoke about fighting terrorism, calling it this `` the decisive ideological struggle of the 21st century.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Courtney Dentch in New York at cdentch1@bloomberg.net; Kerry Young in Washington at kdooley@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: September 2, 2006 17:31 EDT