An erroneous interpretation of the latest Osama bin Laden videotape led most of the American press to misunderstand the terror mastermind’s main threat: a warning for American voters to refrain from re-electing President Bush tomorrow, according to a Washington-based news translation service.

The Middle East Media Research Institute’s president, Yigal Carmon, explains that the incorrect translation was in the crucial sentence, “Any state that does not toy with our security, automatically guarantees its own security,” which appeared in a section in the speech where Mr. bin Laden harshly criticized Mr. Bush.

The use of the Arabic ay wilaya was incorrectly translated in most press reports to mean “a nation,” and was interpreted as directed at countries other than America. Instead, the word could only mean “an American state,” according to Mr. Carmon.

The word wilaya “refers specifically to an American state,” Mr. Carmon argues in his latest Memri Web site posting. “It would never refer to an independent country. The term for such a country is Dawla.

Mr. Carmon cites corroborating evidence for his interpretation from an Islamist Web site, Al-Qala, in a posting made there shortly after the broadcast of Mr. bin Laden’s videotape on Al Jazeera late last week.

“This message was a warning to every U.S. state separately,” Mr. Carmon quotes from Al-Qala. Mr. Bin Laden’s warning that “Every state will be determining its own security and will be responsible for its choice,” is interpreted by the Web site as a direct call for the voters.

“It means that any U.S. state that will choose to vote for the white thug Bush as president has chosen to fight us and we will consider it our enemy,” the al-Qala Web site explains. “And any state that will vote against Bush has chosen to make peace with us, and we will not characterize it as an enemy.”

Most press reports so far lacked this kind of background, leading many analysts to conclude that while the timing of the broadcast, on the eve of the presidential election, was most likely far from purely coincidental, the message in the tape was not meant to “endorse” any of the two main candidates.

In this interpretation, the recorded message allows each American voter the choice of avoiding another attack. “Oh the American people,” Mr. bin Laden says, according to Memri’s translation, “I address these words to you regarding the optimal manner of avoiding another Manhattan.”

Security, he continues, “is not in the hands of Kerry or Bush or Al Qaeda. Your security is in your own hands, and any U.S. state that does not toy with our security automatically guarantees its own security.” This, Mr. Carmon says, is “an election deal to the American voters, attempting to influence the election by these means, rather than through terrorist attacks.” A similar deal, he notes, was offered by Mr. bin Laden to Europeans, in what was presented to them as a truce offering last April.

“This tape is the second of its kind,” says a posting on Al-Islah, another Islamic Web site scrutinized by Memri. “It is a completion of this move, and it brings together the complementary elements of politics and religion, political savvy and force, the sword and justice.”

Mr. bin Laden’s attempt at interfering in the American election, using his own version of diplomacy, is most interesting in light of the fact that it was delivered during the holy month of Ramadan, Mr. Carmon says. Ramadan is the period “which for fundamentalists like bin Laden is the month of Jihad and martyrdom.”

He notes that the bin Laden tape lacks poignant symbols that appeared in past similar offerings: Mr. bin Laden appears carrying no visible weapons, and he makes no references to common themes like “Jihad, martyrdom, the Koran, the Hadith [Islamic tradition], Crusaders, Jews, or the legacy of the Prophet Muhammad on the duty to wage Jihad against the infidels.”

Thus, Mr. Carmon concludes, the speech “sends a regressive and defeatist message of surrender, as seen in the move from solely using Jihad warfare to a mixed strategy of threats combined with truce offers and election deals.”