DUBAI, 4 May 2004 — News television Al-Jazeera management says the Qatar-based broadcaster remains adamant in not modifying coverage of the Iraqi conflict, despite warnings from the US that its reporting could harm political ties between the US and Qatar. Washington has claimed that Al-Jazeera reports on Iraq are “inflammatory” and fuel anti-US sentiment in the Arab world.

The channel broadcasts graphic images of civilian casualties not shown by television networks in the US, and is a preferred channel for Al-Qaeda members wishing to issue statements.

“We are independent from the government of Qatar and we don’t accept decisions from the (Qatari) foreign minister,” Al-Jazeera’s editor in chief, Ahmad Sheikh, told Deutsche Presse Agentur in a telephone interview.

Last week in Washington, Qatar’s Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassem Al-Thani said he would convey US concerns to Al-Jazeera executives and would seek a review of the channel’s coverage of Iraq.

“We will take this concern back to Al-Jazeera and they have to review (it), because we need Al-Jazeera to be professional and we don’t want anybody to transmit lies,” Sheikh Hamad said.

A recent Al-Jazeera report, claiming that US Marines had killed hundreds of civilians in Fallujah, prompted US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld to term the channel’s coverage “vicious, inaccurate and inexcusable”.

Hamad distanced himself and his government from the channel’s editorial position, insisting that television “is part of the freedom of press in Qatar”.

The minister, who met with US Vice President Dick Cheney and other high-ranking officials during his trip to Washington, said the Qatari government would listen to Al-Jazeera’s response to the US accusations.

US Secretary of State Colin Powell said in statements after meeting Sheikh Hamad in Washington that relations between the two countries were being harmed by Al-Jazeera’s coverage.

Al-Jazeera’s editor in chief, however, pledged not to change the channel’s editorial policy, and compared the station with the British television channel BBC, which is financed by the British government but at the same time also has freedom of expression. “We have not yet received any indication from the Qatari government and we don’t feel any pressure,” added Ahmad.

Al-Jazeera was established in 1996 with money from the Qatari government who promised the channel would maintain its freedom and independence.

Mohammed Al-Musfir, a Qatari political analyst, told DPA that Washington was preaching a contradiction, calling for freedom of press on one hand, but on the other hand, trying to choke it.

“They insist in the necessity of freedom of press but they don’t want to hear anything that is said from outside the United States,” he said. “The press in Qatar will not obey. The Americans have no right in Qatar which is an independent country,” he pointed out.

To mitigate the influence of Al-Jazeera in the Arab world, the Pentagon has financed a news television channel, Al-Iraqiya, which regularly broadcasts coverage of the coalition provisional authority briefings and press conferences with Gen. John Abizaid, the supreme US commander in Iraq, and features a weekly interview with US administrator Paul Bremer.