US President George Bush planned to bomb Arab broadcaster Aljazeera, British daily the Daily Mirror has reported, citing a 10 Downing Street memo marked "Top Secret". The five-page transcript of a conversation between Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair revealed that the latter talked Bush out of launching a military strike on the station, unnamed sources told the daily.
The transcript of their talks during Blair's April 16, 2004 visit to Washington shows Bush wanted to attack the satellite channel's headquarters in Doha, Qatar. The British Prime Minister feared such a strike, in the capital of Qatar, a key Western ally in the Gulf, would spark revenge attacks. At the time, the US was launching an all-out assault on insurgents in the Iraqi town of Fallujah.
A spokesman for Blair's Downing Street office said: "We have got nothing to say about this story. We don't comment on leaked documents." A White House official said: "We are not going to dignify something so outlandish with a response." Aljazeera has called on the US and British governments to provide a "good explanation" for comments allegedly made by Bush. Aljazeera said it was still investigating the validity of the memo and whether the US president was "serious" about his alleged comments or not, but warned that if it was credible it was a "bad day" for news organisations worldwide.
Aljazeera's outspoken stand on the US-led invasion into Iraq has drawn continued criticism from Washington. The satellite station has broadcast Al-Qaeda messages as well as graphic scenes of beheadings of Western hostages. The White House has been claiming that Aljazeera's reports on events in the Middle East were biased.
Cabinet Office civil servant David Keogh has been charged under the Official Secrets Act for leaking the government memo to Leo O'Connor, who formerly worked for former British lawmaker Tony Clarke. Both Keogh and O'Connor are scheduled to appear at London's Bow Street Magistrates Court next week. Clarke, a former member of Parliament, told Press Association news agency that O'Connor had done "exactly the right thing" in bringing it to his attention.
The Daily Mirror report said Clarke returned the memo to Blair's office. The Mirror on Tuesday quoted an unnamed British government official as saying Bush's threat was "humorous, not serious".
An unnamed source was quoated by the Mirror as saying, "The memo is explosive and hugely damaging to Bush. He made it clear that he wanted to bomb Aljazeera in Qatar and elsewhere. Blair replied that would cause a big problem. There's no doubt what Bush wanted to do � and no doubt Blair didn't want him to do it." Another source said: "Bush was deadly serious, as was Blair. That much is absolutely clear from the language used by both men."
Aljazeera's HQ is in the business district of Qatar's capital, Doha. Its single-storey buildings would have made an easy target for bombers. As it is sited away from residential areas, and more than 10 miles from the US's desert base in Qatar, there would have been no danger of "collateral damage".
The Mirror said dozens of Aljazeera staff at the HQ are not, as many believe, Islamic fanatics. Instead, most are respected and highly trained technicians and journalists. "To have wiped them out would have been equivalent to bombing the BBC in London and the most spectacular foreign policy disaster since the Iraq War itself."
The Mirror said that the memo "casts fresh doubt on claims that other attacks on Aljazeera were accidents". It cited the 2001 direct hit on the channel's Kabul office in Afghanistan. In April 2003, an Aljazeera journalist died when its Baghdad office was struck during a US bombing campaign. Nabil Khoury, a US State Department spokesman in Doha, said the strike had been a mistake.
In November 2002, Aljazeera's office in Afghanistan capital Kabul was destroyed by a US missile. None of the crew was at the office at the time. US officials said they believed the target was a terrorist site and did not know it was Aljazeera's office.
"We are still investigating the credibility and the contents of the document and in the absence of comment from Downing Street we are slightly cautious," the Aljazeera's London bureau chief, Yofri Fouda, told the Guardian. "We certainly hope it's not true, but if it turns out to be true it would be horrific and bad news not only for Aljazeera but for every news organisation around the world," he added.
"We hope Downing Street or the White House comes up with a good explanation � either denying the memo exists or if it is true, that the president was at least joking." Fouda said if details about the alleged memo were correct, it would throw into question US explanations about attacks on its Kabul and Baghdad offices in 2001 and 2003. "It will cast even more doubt on the circumstances surrounding previous incidents," he said.
Meanwhile, Blair's former defence minister Peter Kilfoyle challenged Downing Street to publish the transcript. "I believe that Downing Street ought to publish this memo in the interests of transparency, given that much of the detail appears to be in the public domain," Kilfoyle told the Press Association.
"I think they ought to clarify what exactly happened on this occasion. If it was the case that President Bush wanted to bomb Aljazeera in what is after all a friendly country, it speaks volumes and it raises questions about subsequent attacks that took place on the press that wasn't embedded with coalition forces."
Abd al-Bari Atwan, chief editor of the London-based Al-Quds al-Arabi newspaper, told Aljazeera: "The issue of Bush's plan to bomb Aljazeera's headquarters in Doha will be widely discussed in Washington and London. Reporters in the US and Britain are enraged by reported US plans to use force against media organs. Arab and international media organs are now under a terrorist campaign launched by the US as it does not want the truth to be revealed."
He said, "This [US] administration has been disgraced as it has used immoral and illegal ways to occupy and tear out a country, kill more than 100,000 and wound more than 400,000 of its people. The results of the war, being revealed now in Iraq, have forced reporters to ask why they have been misled."
Atwan said, "The New York Times has apologised, saying it has misled public opinion when it did not accurately investigate the objectives of the US administration. I believe that considering use force against a media station is the worst kind of media terrorism practised by a country which pretends to lead the free world, democratic values and media freedom."
