DUBAI, March 30: Yasser Arafat cut short a live telephone interview with CNN’s Christiane Amanpour on Friday night when he was repeatedly asked if he would rein in Palestinian militants.

“You have to be accurate when you are speaking with General Yasser Arafat,” he shouted. “Are you asking me why I am are under complete siege, you are a wonderful journalist. You have to respect your profession.

“You are covering with these questions the terrorist activities of the Israeli occupation and the Israeli crimes. Be fair!” yelled Arafat.

He abruptly terminated the interview saying, “(Do) not make this ... mistake. Thank you. Bye bye.”

Arab satellite television channels have become a major player in the Arab-Israeli conflict broadcasting 24 hours a day to an audience particularly sensitive to brutal images of dead Palestinians killed by Israeli fire.

“I prefer to die than to be taken prisoner or be killed,” by the Israeli army, Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said over and over to various Arab television news programmes who called him directly in his besieged Ramallah heaquarters on Friday.

The drama of unfolding events is entering Arab homes and hearts as never before as the Middle East watches the Israeli offensive against Arafat’s headquarters minute by minute.

When Arafat hung up angrily on a star CNN reporter, the leading position of the Arab-language satellite channels looked confirmed.

“CNN’s monopoly over coverage of events in the Arab world is over,” said a journalist in Dubai, a new media centre where CNN itself recently opened a small office.

“Arab satellite station offering the Arabic public a more realistic and more objective coverage,” he claimed.

Trail-blazing Al-Jazeera satellite channel of Qatar, followed by Abu Dhabi TV in the United Arab Emirates, the Saudi-owned MBC and other stations broadcasting from Europe such as Orbit, today provide continuous news coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian violence.

The coincidence of an Arab summit-backed peace offer to Israel and the offensive Prime Minister Ariel Sharon unleashed against the Palestinian leadership after another Palestinian suicide bombing had killed 20 Israelis, had Arab viewers riveted.

The Arab channels have no truck with Western reluctance to expose the audience to the horrors of war, mixing scenes of death agonies with Arafat’s defiant statements under shell-fire..—AFP