LONDON - The postwar director of U.S.-backed Iraqi Television has quit, saying the United States is losing the propaganda war to countries like Iran and to the fugitive Saddam Hussein.

Three months after being flown to Baghdad on board a U.S. plane to relaunch Iraqi television and radio, former exile Ahmad Rikabi is disillusioned and back in London for the foreseeable future.

"Saddam Hussein is doing better at marketing himself, through Al Jazeera and Al Arabiya Gulf channels," Rikabi said, referring to the audio tapes believed to be from the former Iraqi leader which have been supplied to those stations and broadcast across the region.

He said that as the United States failed to invest in Iraqi stations or to retain local staff, channels such as Iran's Al Alam and Qatar's Al Jazeera were gaining popularity in Iraq.

"The people of Iraq, including the Sunni Muslims, are not about to turn against their liberators, but they are being incited to do so. These channels contribute to tension within Iraq. You need television at their level," he told Reuters.

Rikabi uttered the first words broadcast on Iraqi national airwaves after the fall of Saddam Hussein on April 9.

"Welcome to the new Iraq. Welcome to an Iraq without Saddam, Uday or Qusay," Rikabi's emotional voice said in a radio broadcast over a transmitter erected by U.S. soldiers at Baghdad airport.

One of the first acts of the new director was to broadcast the Shi'ite call to prayer, along with the Sunni one -- a symbol of equality after decades of discrimination against the Shi'ite majority by the former ruling Baath Party.

Rikabi helped recruit a team that got transmission up to 16 hours a day, operating out of a convention center in Baghdad that included a fortified bedroom once reserved for Saddam.

But many of the staff have now left, Rikabi said, adding that locals were being paid too little.

SAIC, a California-based company contracted to relaunch the television station, said it had no comment on Rikabi's remarks.

"The United States needs to listen to Iraqis more, and not just in the media sector," Rikabi said.

BRIGHT FUTURE

In exile Rikabi worked with the U.S.-funded Radio Free Iraq, dreaming of return. Of the millions of Iraqis in the diaspora, he was among the first of only a few to have returned to Iraq since the fall of Saddam.

He had never seen his homeland before, his father and mother having escaped from Iraq in the year he was born, 1969. He met his brother, a colonel in the now defunct Iraqi army, for the first time in April.

"It will take us generations to repair what Saddam did. Iraqi society runs on lies. There is virtually no independent thinking. Sycophancy and sectarianism are rife," he said.

But the broadcaster and writer said he remained optimistic that Iraq would recover. Elections and employment, he said, would give everyone a stake in the country.

"People will not invest as long as you have assassinations, military operations, curfews and checkpoints," he said.

Iraq's lot, he said, would be worse if the U.S. troops now pulled out, as the guerrillas who attack them daily want.

"The street does not support those behind the instability. People know that only the U.S. presence is preventing a blood bath in the form of revenge against the Baathists," he said.typical of everything the Americans get involved in. They announce large budgets and the money is never released."

© Copyright Reuters Ltd 2003

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