LONDON, Oct 25: The BBC World Service is closing 10 local language radio services, mostly to eastern Europe, to pay for a new Arabic-language satellite television channel.

The Arabic TV service will compete with the popular Arab TV channel Al Jazeera, which has been accused by Washington of biased reporting on Iraq.

World Service Director Nigel Chapman said the move reflected a changing media and geopolitical climate in which Cold War priorities needed to be re-examined.

“The Middle East’s media landscape has changed profoundly following the spread of satellite television,” he said.

“Without a BBC news presence in Arabic on television, we run the risk of always being second to television, despite the quality of our radio and new media offers.”

Broadcasts in Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hungarian, Kazakh, Polish, Slovak, Slovene and Thai will stop by the end of March 2006.

Chapman said that in many of the affected countries, newly liberal democracies had resulted in an explosion in local news media outlets, resulting in less need for the World Service.

The new Arabic TV channel was formed at the request of the British Foreign Office, which funds the World Service through a direct grant worth 239 million pounds.—Reuters