Naseer Al-Nahr, Asharq Al-Awsat

BAGHDAD, 25 November 2003 — Iraq’s interim Governing Council said yesterday it was banning the Al-Arabiya satellite TV channel from working in Iraq for incitement to murder as a Sunni leader called for a week-long cease-fire to celebrate Eid Al-Fitr marking the end of Ramadan, during which violence surged.

While US President George W. Bush promised American troops a pay rise, French President Jacques Chirac backed an accelerated plan to transfer power to Iraqis, but said the Washington initiative was “insufficient and incomplete.”

“We have decided to ban Al-Arabiya in Iraq for a certain period of time because it broadcast an invitation to murder, an incitement to murder by the voice of Saddam Hussein,” said the council’s current Chairman Jalal Talabani.

He said council members would also pursue a separate suit against the Dubai-based Arabic-language station through the Iraqi courts, the first here against a news organization since Saddam’s overthrow in April.

Al-Arabiya announced shortly afterward that its Baghdad bureau had been forcibly shut and its office contents seized, despite rejecting charges that its broadcast of a Saddam tape had incited murder.

Earlier, it agreed to heed the ban until legal action over its broadcast was settled, the bureau chief told reporters.

“Al-Arabiya will continue to broadcast material on Iraq but the source will no longer be the Baghdad bureau,” said Wihad Yaqub. Bureau staff at the station’s villa in the upmarket residential district of Mansur said the police had come at about 5:00 p.m. (1400 GMT) and confiscated the satellite link but added that they had been “very polite”.

The offending tape broadcast on Nov. 16 a voice purported to be Saddam’s calling to fight “those who are installed by foreign armies,” describing it as a “legitimate duty, patriotic and humanitarian.”

Adnan Al-Dulaimi, head of Iraq’s Sunni religious administration, meanwhile called for a cease-fire during the Eid Al-Fitr holiday, which Sunnis celebrated yesterday in Iraq with the end of the holy fasting month dogged by grisly violence.

“I call on the resistance to suspend operations this week so that Iraqis can live in peace, without the blast of explosives, bombs and shooting,” he said in an Eid sermon at a Baghdad mosque.

“I ask also the occupation forces not to deal with Iraqis as terrorists ... I ask (the Americans) to bring joy to the hearts of Iraqis, to stop the searches of homes and the hunt for Iraqis so that they can live this week in peace and quiet.”

Talabani later announced that the Governing Council has launched a “comprehensive” anti-terror plan including “military and defensive measures,” and that a nationwide media campaign would be launched next month.

Meanwhile, Bush signed yesterday a massive $401 billion defense spending bill which will give soldiers a pay rise as they endure tough deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan.

“We will do whatever it takes to keep our nation strong, to keep the peace and to keep the American people secure,” Bush said.

— Additional input from agencies