October 25, 2001	Thursday	Shaba'an 7, 1422

PARIS, Oct 24: France’s defence ministry has banned a French satellite imagery service from selling pictures of Afghanistan to the media in an act that amounts to censorship, a Paris-based press watchdog said on Wednesday.

Reporters sans Frontieres (Reporters without Borders) said the curbs on the commercial company, Spot Image, followed similar steps in the United States to control how the world sees the results of military action against Afghanistan.

It said RSF Secretary-General Robert Menard had written to Defence Minister Alain Richard urging him to lift the ban.

“As in the United States, the Defence Ministry is applying real censorship by prohibiting access to satellite images of Afghanistan,” Menard said in the letter.

“The military clampdown on civilian satellite images deprives the media of their control function,” he wrote.

The United States has restricted information to the media on operations in Afghanistan, citing a need for secrecy in the “war on terrorism” that it has been waging since the September 11 hijacked airliner attacks on New York and Washington.

Recent news reports said the U.S. government’s National Imagery and Mapping Agency has bought exclusive rights to all commercial satellite imagery of Afghanistan from Space Imaging Inc, a Denver-based company, in a contract worth some $2 million valid from October 7, the day U.S.-led air strikes began.

Media rights and civil liberties groups say such steps make it harder for journalists to report independently on the impact of air strikes, including when they kill or injure civilians.

CLOSE-UP IMAGES: RSF said it had learned that all Spot Image pictures of Afghanistan and neighbouring countries including Iran and Pakistan were now available only to the French military.

Defence Ministry spokesman Jean-Francois Bureau confirmed that restrictions had been imposed on Spot Image, but said they were “limited to certain geographical zones and not systematic”.

“Spot Image has obligations in its statute which allow the authorities to impose a certain number of rules,” Bureau said.

Based in Toulouse in southwest France, Spot Image is 35 percent owned by the French space agency CNES.

Its images have a 10-metre resolution, meaning the satellites that capture them can pick up features on the ground that are 10 metres or more in size.

Space Imaging Inc, whose customers include commercial enterprises and governments, can provide pictures with a resolution as high as one metre — smaller than the human body — using the IKONOS satellite launched in 1999.

France, a NATO member, has backed the campaign and is providing logistical and other support.—Reuters