WASHINGTON, 1 May 2004 — Qatari Foreign Minister Sheikh Hamad Bin Jassem Al-Thani pledged Thursday to act on sternly worded US complaints that the Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television network’s coverage of Iraq is unfair. “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 send lies or to send wrong information,” he said at the White House.
Sheikh Hamad said he had talked with Vice President Dick Cheney and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and that “they have some concerns that Al-Jazeera sends some inaccurate information about what’s happening in Iraq.
“Al-Jazeera and our government would like only accurate information, and we need them to be professional,” he said. “That’s not respectable by us and not by the world if they are doing this.”
At the same time, Sheikh Hamad distanced himself from the Arabic-language news channel’s coverage, saying he was “not responsible” for it and that the network was “part of the free press” in Qatar. And he said Qatar’s government needed to hear from Al-Jazeera “what they have to say about this.”
At the State Department, deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said Washington was “looking for the Qataris to take action” in response to the US complaints.
“We’ve asked them to take steps to professionalize the station, and to adapt and adopt practices that other responsible news organizations do, and expect that will happen in due course,” he told reporters.
