“This is a decision taken by the national security committee to protect the people of Iraq,” said Allawi

BAGHDAD, August 7 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) – Interim Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi ordered Saturday, July 7, pan-Arab television channel Al-Jazeera to close its offices in Baghdad for a month only one day after US Secretary Donald Rumsfeld launched a fresh bitter attack on the all-news Arab channel.

“This is a decision taken by the national security committee to protect the people of Iraq, in the interests of the Iraqi people,” Allawi told a press conference in Baghdad.

He said an independent committee was assigned for the last four weeks to monitor the Doha-based channel and found out that it “incited hatred and racial tension”.

Allawi said the ban could be renewed should Al-Jazeera fail to change its editorial policy.

Earlier this month, Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari criticized Al-Jazeera, the Saudi-funded Al-Arabiya and other Arab and Iranian stations for their coverage of Iraq and threatened to close their Baghdad offices.

Zebari said Al-Jazeera, Al-Arabiya, Hizbollah's Al-Manar television and Iran's Al-Alam were “channels of incitement working against the interests, security and stability of the Iraqi people”.

“We will no longer tolerate this in the future,” said Zebari.

Disappointing

Nidal Mansour, the head of the Amman-based Movement for Protecting Journalists, said the Iraqi government should rather target “terrorists” instead of media outlets.

“It is indeed a disappointing move as we expected that this government will set itself up as a role model in the region for protecting freedom of expression since it parrots every now and then about democracy,” he told Al-Jazeera.

Gamal Fahmi, the head of Freedoms Committee with Egypt’s Journalists’ Syndicate, said if the all-news channel has committed any wrongdoings or distorted facts, the Iraqi government should then resort to litigation, but not to close it.

The Secretary of the Egyptian Journalists’ Syndicate, Yahia Qallash, said the move was expected.

He hit out at the “blatant” interference of the Iraqi government into the inner workings of media and press offices in Iraq, citing the outcome of a fact-finding mission by the Arab Journalists’ Union in a recent visit to the war-torn country.

Damaging US Image

Al-Jazeera convinced people that the US is an occupying force “which is a lie”, said Rumsfeld

The decision came one day after remarks made by Rumsfeld, accusing Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya of harming the image of the United States in the Arab world.

Speaking at the Chicago Council on Foreign Relations Friday, Rumsfeld said that Al-Jazeera coverage of Iraq has damaged US initiatives in the Middle East, the Pentagon said on its website.

For example, he said, “they have persuaded an enormous fraction” of people that the United States is in Iraq as an occupying force, “which is a lie”.

Or, he added, they have persuaded people that US soldiers “are randomly killing innocent civilians, which is a lie”.

He further claimed that some of Al-Jazeera reporters in Baghdad have been in the past on the payroll of the regime of Saddam Hussein.

Rumsfeld claimed on November 25 he has seen reports suggesting Al-Jazeera have cooperated  with Iraqi resistance fighters attacking US troops.

“They are hurting us,” Rumsfeld was quoted as saying on Al-Jazeera and the Dubai-based Al-Arabiya station.

Relations between the channel and Washington have been always running on a collision course.

Last April, the United States asked Al-Jazeera team to leave the restive Iraqi town of Fallujah as one of conditions for reaching a settlement to the bloody stand-off that claimed the lives of 700 peoples, mostly women and children.

On April 8, 2003, US forces hit with missiles  Al-Jazeera office in Baghdad, killing its correspondent Tariq Ayyoub just a few hours before rolling into the capital.

The channel officials charged the missile attack was a "deliberate" strike, recalling that the office of the station had been hit in November 2001 during the US-led assault on the Taliban regime in Afghanistan.

Al-Jazeera website was also downed by hackers a few days after Washington and London blasted the station for its footages  of dead US and British soldiers and captured PoWs.