The Taliban, toppled from government in a US-led offensive four years ago, had lists of "impassioned" people ready to carry out suicide attacks against Afghan and foreign forces, a statement attributed to Mullah Mohammad Omar said.
The statement also accused the West of trying to use democracy to destroy the leaders of Islamic nations such as Iran and the Palestinian territories, and of fomenting religious violence in Iraq.
"We will intensify suicide attacks to the extent that we will make the land beneath their feet like a flaming oven," said the statement read to AFP by purported Taliban spokesman Mohammad Hanif.
"People are so impassioned that they have filled lists with their names for suicide attacks."
There have been regular suicide attacks and car bombings in insurgency-hit Afghanistan since September last year, a shift that security sources say suggests the influence of Al Qaeda and Iraqi militants.
With warmer weather on the way, "the crusade soldiers and their puppets will face a strong resistance like they have never imagined", the statement said.
It called on all Afghans to join the "resistance against the crusade war and crusaders", a reference to foreign forces that have been based in Afghanistan since the Taliban were removed in a US-led attack in late 2001.
Violence linked mostly to a Taliban-led insurgency killed about 1,600 people last year, many of them militants killed by security forces.
Although the unrest usually decreases when the weather is cold, the just-ended winter saw a steady stream of attacks that have killed about 150 people this year.
"The American and Western democracy is a big lie," the statement said.
"It is Western and American propaganda through which they want to destroy Islamic nations' leaders, to destroy the elected government of Iran, destroy the Palestinian elected leader."
"The differences between Sunnis and Shias in Iraq is a plot of the Westerners," it added.
The statement said that the "inhumane treatment" of prisoners at US detention facilities in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, coupled with recent cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed, showed that "Western infidels want to destroy our beliefs, our land, our culture".
The cartoons, considered by Muslims to be blasphemous, sparked massive protests in Afghanistan last month in which 11 people were killed.
Unusually the statement was signed "Mullah Mohammad Omar, your religious brother, the servant of the Afghani resistance and the leader of the Taliban movement".
In previous messages, the one-eyed Omar - who has a $25-million bounty on his head - has referred to himself only as the leader of the Taliban.
The change and the statement's reference to Iraq and the Palestinian territories suggest that the Taliban have begun to see themselves as part of a multinational resistance to the West.
The 2001 US-led offensive was launched when the Taliban refused to hand over their ally, Al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden.
Americans form the bulk of nearly 30,000 troops who are in Afghanistan to try to root out insurgents from the Taliban and their allies, including from the Al Qaeda network.
© 2006 Agence France-Presse
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