August 2, 2003	Saturday	Jumadi-us-Sani 3, 1424

BAGHDAD, Aug 1: Already strained relations between US troops in Iraq and international media covering their every move are deteriorating, a journalists’ watchdog charged on Friday.

French-based Reporters Without Borders (Reporters Sans Frontieres, or RSF) “deplored the worsening attitude of US troops towards journalists in Iraq” following several detentions of reporters covering post-war Iraq.

A number of reporters for world media have been beaten or detained by soldiers since the war to topple Saddam Hussein was declared over on May 1, while prominent Arab satellite stations have been targets of scathing criticism by senior US officials.

The statement focused in large part on the continued detention of two Iranian television journalists arrested July 1 in the southern Iraqi town of Diwaniyah for what the US-led coalition called “security violations”.

The coalition has refused to say more about the incident other than that talks about the detention of newsmen Said Abutaleb and Soheil Karimi were underway with Tehran, which has called for the journalists’ immediate release.

“The US-British forces must provide convincing evidence that the Iranians have violated security or else release them at once,” RSF secretary-general Robert Menard said.

In Iran, 162 MPs slammed the arrests of the journalists, said to be making a documentary on the life of Iraqis, as “a patent example of violation of democracy and freedom”.

RSF also highlighted other incidents that have strained ties between the media and the US military, which has gone to lengths to help embed journalists on US patrols but has also barred reporters from filming or covering their operations.

Japanese journalist Kazutaka Sato of Nippon Television Network was thrown to the ground and beaten by several US soldiers and briefly detained July 27 in Baghdad while filming a raid on a house in search for ousted president Saddam Hussein, it said.—AFP