DOHA, QATAR -- The al-Jazeera English-language Web site, which was knocked out of cyberspace on its first day by irate Web surfers, is forging ahead with plans for a relaunch, station officials said Monday.

"There was a huge surge in interest," said Nabil Hijazi, the Web site's deputy managing editor, who predicted Monday that the English site could be back up as early as the middle of this week. "We expect that to continue. People are looking for a fresh voice."

Within a day of its March 24 premiere, amid widespread Western outrage when al-Jazeera television aired footage of dead and captured U.S. soldiers, the site (english.aljazeera.net) was wiped out by a cyber attack. The older Arabic- language al-Jazeera site was also shut down by hackers, who replaced it with an image of a U.S. flag.

Hackers replaced the content of the English-language Web site of Al-Jazeera with a U.S. flag and a patriotic message

It was a fitting start for the new Web site -- which stands to both benefit and suffer from the long shadow cast by its parent channel -- the Qatar-based station known as the "CNN of the Arab world."

Hijazi said that on its first day, the site attracted a flood of genuine visitors in addition to the server-jamming wave of requests known as a denial- of-service attack.

When the site does come back, it can count on intense Western scrutiny.

Already, Joanne Tucker, the English site's managing editor, says Yahoo and AOL have refused to run ads for the new site.

For many in the West, the al-Jazeera brand name has been synonymous with anti-U.S. bias -- and the recent controversy has only heightened that perception.

The Web site did nothing to dispel that perception in its brief premiere. Headlines dripped with sarcasm. One read: "U.S. 'precision' bomb destroys civilian bus."

Another story, headlined "U.S. remembers Geneva convention," mocked the Americans for insisting that the rules of war forbid humiliating displays of prisoners of war. "Images of surrendering Iraqi soldiers being forced to kneel down and body-searched by U.S. troops stirred few emotions in the Western world," the text said.

Web site executives concede that the tone caused offense, and they say the resuscitated site will be less aggressively anti-American.

But they vow to keep the site up and running, despite the threat of further attacks.

"It's a must," said Ibtisam al Gindi, the head of mass communications at Qatar University. "It should have been here before. It's almost too late."

As for al-Jazeera's coverage, al Gindi agrees that the channel is not objective -- but then neither is anybody else, she says.

"You can't separate a person from the culture they were raised in," she said. "It's one side's subjectivity against the other side's subjectivity."

Many in the West aren't buying that argument. In the wake of last week's stir over the parent channel airing photos of POWs, a pair of al-Jazeera Wall Street correspondents had their press credentials abruptly revoked by the New York Stock Exchange.

The channel, which is funded by the Qatari government and stocked with veterans of the defunct BBC Arabic television service, made its reputation covering the second Palestinian intifada and the U.S. campaign in Afghanistan.

In its seven-year existence, al-Jazeera television has drawn the ire of both the Bush administration, for its airing of Osama bin Laden videos, and several Middle Eastern governments, for its willingness to host critics of the local regimes.

Tucker, who came to al-Jazeera after spending six years as a producer with the BBC, said the U.S. government had gradually softened its approach to the channel.

"Initially (after Sept. 11, 2001), it was tense because we were the only channel airing the enemy's point of view," she said. "They now understand that we are not the Osama bin Laden channel."

In fact, the U.S. military, which is running the Iraq war from a base outside of al-Jazeera's home city of Doha, has worked hard to maintain good relations with the channel. The preparations for the Iraqi campaign featured an overt charm campaign that one Western journalist characterized as "somewhat sycophantic."

Al-Jazeera reporters were offered extra spots as "embedded" journalists with the U.S. military, though the station had to decline spots in Bahrain and Kuwait because of its rocky relationship with the host countries, which it has reviled for providing aid to the U.S. military.

In early March, several Central Command public information officers even attended a barbecue at the home of al-Jazeera's news director.

Jihad Ali Ballout, the channel's spokesman, said he didn't expect that warmer relationship to be permanently disrupted by the POW controversy. With 45 million Arabic speaking viewers, he said, the channel is simply too important to alienate.

"Al-Jazeera has proven itself to be a major player," Ballout said. "It makes sense to use al-Jazeera to reach the Arab world."

Now as al-Jazeera turns its sights on an English-speaking audience, Tucker has assembled a staff made up largely of cultural half-breeds. Almost everyone in the newsroom is either half-Arab, Arab raised in the West or a Westerner with extensive Middle Eastern experience and language abilities.

The office demographics are no accident. Tucker, a Lebanese American, says she deliberately sought "people with a foot in both cultures" to help forge an independent voice.

"Whatever people think of it, I known there will be nothing else like it," she said. "This is a hugely important region, and you can't only cover it from a Western-centric perspective."

©2003 San Francisco Chronicle

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