Middle East Feature: Why are Arab Journalists The "Unknown Soldiers" in Battle for Truth? (Al-Nassrawi)

After a career of nearly forty years in journalism, including assignments and newsroom work for some 30 years with Western news organizations, I can say with a clear conscience that there is nothing to compare with the knowledge and courage of some Arab journalists who work with foreign media and whose input to the Middle East coverage has been invaluable.

Yet, these journalists have remained "unknown soldiers" in the raging battle for truth and accuracy, in a crude manifestation of denial and prejudice. Those who are familiar with what I am talking about know pretty well that this is a phenomenon which speaks volumes about the kind of reporting the Middle East receives in the Western media.

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Syria Special: The Assad Regime's PR Campaign with British Journalists

Andrew Gilligan of The Daily Telegraph talks about his interview with Syria's President Assad

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Amidst the continuing violence in Syria, with more than 60 people reportedly killed in the last 48 hours, we note a move by the Assad regime on the public-relations front.

Access by foreign journalists has been restricted since the uprising began in Syria, with those who do get in, save exceptions such as Nir Rosen and Anthony Shadid, closely monitored by government officials. This does not guarantee presentation of the regime line --- the recent despatch by Liz Sly in The Washington Post, mentioned in EA this week, is highly recommended --- but it does restrict coverage of the protests, clashes, and military operations.

However, President Assad and his advisors have apparently decided this is not enough, as tensions and casualties escalate in cities such as Homs and Hama. In what is far more than a coincidence, they have set out their case to two British journalists, Robert Fisk of The Independent and Andrew Gilligan of The Daily Telegraph.

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Syria (and Beyond) LiveBlog: A Regime Losing Control?

2025 GMT: Syria state news agency SANA is highlighting pro-regime rallies throughout the country today, including marches in Damascus, Baniyas, "stressing rejection of all forms of foreign interference in Syria's affairs".

The demonstrators unfurled large Syrian flags, sang the national anthem, and chanted in support of President Assad's reform programme.

2010 GMT: Footage from Morocco's largest city Casablanca of today's pro-reform demonstration:

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Palestine Feature: Secrecy, Intermediaries, and Deals --- How Fatah and Hamas Reconciled (Fisk)

Mahmoud Abbas and Khaled MeshaalSecret meetings between Palestinian intermediaries, Egyptian intelligence officials, the Turkish foreign minister, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal --- the latter requiring a covert journey to Damascus with a detour round the rebellious city of Deraa --- brought about the Palestinian unity which has so disturbed both Israelis and the American government. Fatah and Hamas ended four years of conflict in May with an agreement that is crucial to the Paslestinian demand for a state.

A series of detailed letters, accepted by all sides, of which The Independent has copies, show just how complex the negotiations were; Hamas also sought --- and received --- the support of Syrian President Bachar al-Assad, the country’s vice president Farouk al-Sharaa and its foreign minister, Walid Moallem. Among the results was an agreement by Meshaal to end Hamas rocket attacks on Israel from Gaza --- since resistance would be the right only of the state --- and agreement that a future Palestinian state be based on Israel’s 1967 borders.

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The Latest from Iran (23 April): "We Were First"

1730 GMT: A Matter of Intelligence. Ali Akbar Javenfekr, the managing director of the State news agency IRNA, has effectively apologised for his newspaper's handling of the Supreme Leader's message to the people of Shiraz, saying that IRNA "devoted its efforts to the goals of revolutionary ideals and the Islamic system".

IRNA had altered the official release from the Supreme Leader's office, omitting Ayatollah Khamenei's support for the Ministry of Intelligence and implicit slap-down of President Ahmadinejad and his advisors for trying to force out the head of the Ministry, Heydar Moslehi. Khamenei's office then told media not to rely on reports from IRNA.

While apologising, Javanfekr made no reference to the Moslehi affair.

Meanwhile, the conservative stie Alef has removed its story about President Ahmadinejad's refusal to work with Moslehi.

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Libya Feature: Scenes from Tripoli (Fisk)

Up to 15,000 men, women and children besieged Tripoli's international airport last night, shouting and screaming for seats on the few airliners still prepared to fly to Muammar Gaddafi's rump state, paying Libyan police bribe after bribe to reach the ticket desks in a rain-soaked mob of hungry, desperate families. Many were trampled as Libyan security men savagely beat those who pushed their way to the front.

Among them were Gaddafi's fellow Arabs, thousands of them Egyptians, some of whom had been living at the airport for two days without food or sanitation. The place stank of faeces and urine and fear. Yet a 45-minute visit into the city for a new airline ticket to another destination is the only chance to see Gaddafi's capital if you are a "dog" of the international press.

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Libya Feature: In His Last Days, a Cruel Dictator Seeks a Facelift (Fisk)

So even the old, paranoid, crazed fox of Libya --- the pallid, infantile, droop-cheeked dictator from Sirte, owner of his own female praetorian guard, author of the preposterous Green Book, who once announced he would ride to a Non-Aligned Movement summit in Belgrade on his white charger – is going to ground. Or gone. Last night, the man I first saw more than three decades ago, solemnly saluting a phalanx of black-uniformed frogmen as they flappered their way across the sulphur-hot tarmac of Green Square on a torrid night in Tripoli during a seven-hour military parade, appeared to be on the run at last, pursued --- like the dictators of Tunis and Cairo --- by his own furious people.

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