EGYPT: AL JAZEERA BUREAU CHIEF ARRESTED

Cairo, 27 April (AKI) - The Cairo bureau chief of Al Jazeera, Husein Abdel Ghani, has been arrested on charges of providing false information intended to discredit Egypt's image, the pan-Arabic network has announced. Ghani, an Egyptian who had worked with the BBC in London, was in Sinai to cover the triple bomb blasts that killed 21 people in Dahab on Monday. He was approached by two men who said they wanted to talk to him in private, Al Jazeera said, and immediately afterwards the journalist disappeared.

On Wednesday, Al Jazeera had broadcast the news of an armed clash at Balbeis, in the Sharqiya governorate, 50 kilometres east of Cairo. Armed men reportedly opened fire against a police check point though without injuring anyone. The news was firmly refuted by the interior ministry during the course of the day, and the denial was carried by Al Jazeera.

After his arrest, Ghani was transferred to Cairo. The Egyptian Journalist's Union expressed its solidarity to the journalist and to his channel and has sent two representatives to sit in on Ghani's interrogation by a security court.

It is not the first time that Al Jazeera has run into problems with the authorities in various Arab nations since the ground-breaking Qatar-based network was launched in 1996.

Al Jazeera has on various occasions been accused of spreading false information and Islamist propaganda or undermining the stability of governments.

In Morocco, Algeria and Iraq, its correspondents have been asked to leave and its bureaus closed for months.

The most controversial case centres around Taysir Alouni, one of their star correspondents in Afghanistan, who was arrested in Spain, tried and convicted of supporting the al-Qaeda network.

But Al Jazeera has riled not only Arab governments but also the U.S. - in particular for its unprecedented access to al-Qaeda and to insurgent and terrorist groups, who choose the Doha based network to release their videos or communiques.

Last November, a British newspaper carried a report - later dismissed by the White House - that president George W. Bush planned to bomb the headquarters of the satellite TV station. The paper, the Mirror, published a transcript of talks between Bush and British prime minister Tony Blair which appeared to show Blair talking the American leader out of the plan.