Christians Under Attack

The BBC's Arabic language service operates a separate editorial system to the rest of the corporation that is "anti-Western and anti-democratic", an American academic said yesterday.

Frank Stewart, a Jerusalem-based Middle East expert, said that the World Service's Arabic radio service - which is soon to be supplemented by a television version - has been consistently hostile to the US and British governments while treating Arab leaders with kid gloves.

Writing in the New York Times, Prof Stewart claimed that the 60-year-old Arabic service was "entirely different" to the "quality" broadcasts of the World Service's English-language programmes.

He cited various examples, including a 50-minute BBC Arabic Service programme about torture which, he said, discussed only one specific allegation from the head of an organisation representing Saudis imprisoned by the US at Guantanamo Bay.

Prof Stewart said that the station subjected the words and deeds of Western leaders, especially those of the US and Britain, to "minute analysis, generally on the assumption that behind them lies a hidden and disreputable agenda". When British police exposed an alleged plot to blow up planes over the Atlantic, a BBC Arabic presenter concentrated a discussion on the theory that the arrests had taken place because Tony Blair wanted to associate Muslims with terrorism, he said.

Meanwhile, "authoritarian regimes and armed militants of the Arab world" got "sympathetic treatment", said Prof Stewart, who is a professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and a visiting scholar at New York University.

Saddam Hussein was a "great favourite" of the service and it reported as "straight news" his re-election to a seven-year term in 2002, said Prof Stewart.

President Assad of Syria was similarly indulged, he claimed. When a US state department representative referred to Syria as a dictatorship, his BBC interviewer "immediately interrupted and reprimanded him". Prof Stewart alleged that the Arabic Service not only shielded Arab leaders from criticism, but avoided topics - such as human rights, and corruption - that they might find embarrassing.

When the service did occasionally broach such sensitive topics, they were usually dealt with in general terms, with guarded references to "certain Arab countries".

Prof Stewart said it was "strange" that the British government, which funds the World Service through a Foreign Office grant, paid for such broadcasts.

The World Service is closing 10 foreign language services to pay for its Arabic television channel, expected to cost £19 million a year.

The BBC insisted that its Arabic Service operated to the same editorial guidelines as the rest of the corporation and that it "pulled no punches" in its efforts to "test arguments on all sides".