VZCZCXYZ0001
RR RUEHWEB

DE RUEHDO #0467/01 0861449
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 271449Z MAR 06
FM AMEMBASSY DOHA
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 4567
INFO RUEHXK/ARAB ISRAELI COLLECTIVE
RUEHGB/AMEMBASSY BAGHDAD 0067
RUEHLO/AMEMBASSY LONDON 0946
RHEHAAA/NSC WASHINGTON DC
RUEKJCS/SECDEF WASHINGTON DC
RHMFISS/CDR USCENTCOM MACDILL AFB FL

C O N F I D E N T I A L DOHA 000467 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
STATE FOR NEA/PD, NEA/ARP, S/CT 
INFO NSC FOR ABRAMS, DOD/OSD FOR SCHENKER AND MATHENY 
LONDON FOR ARAB MEDIA OFFICE 
BAGHDAD FOR HOSTAGE WORKING GROUP 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 10/30/2010 
TAGS: KPAO PREL QA ALJAZEERA
SUBJECT: WADAH KHANFAR TAKES THE HELM OF THE AL JAZEERA 
NETWORK 
 
REF: A. DOHA 312 
     ¶B. DOHA 317 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Chase Untermeyer, reasons 1.4 (b&d) 
 
¶1. (C) Summary: PAO met March 27 with Wadah Khanfar, Managing 
Director of Al Jazeera satellite channel. Khanfar discussed 
his recent appointment as Director-General of the Al Jazeera 
Network, noting that his two mandates are to minimize costs 
by integrating the infrastructures of the diverse Al Jazeera 
entities and to develop a brand strategy. He has been given a 
year to complete the integration and to come up with a 
business model for privatization. Khanfar said that Al 
Jazeera and Al Jazeera International will remain independent 
editorially. Khanfar said AJ would not give embassies of 
countries with hostages in Iraq copies of hostage tapes but 
would permit their law enforcement authorities to view the 
tape in any location with an Al Jazeera bureau. Khanfar also 
discussed AJ's March 25 interview with a representative of 
the "Islamic Army in Iraq" and a September 2005 series on 
9/11 prepared by AJ reporter Yousri Fouda. End summary. 
 
 
The new position 
---------------- 
 
¶2. (C) Wadah discussed his appointment as Director General of 
the Al Jazeera Network, the entity set up to assure unity of 
brand and operations among the different Al Jazeera entities. 
Khanfar, who is also a member of the recently-named AJN Board 
(Ref A), said the DG position will not have a role in the 
day-to-day running of the different Al Jazeera entities. The 
DG's mandate is two-fold, he said: to integrate the 
infrastructures of the diverse Al Jazeera entities and to 
develop a unified brand strategy. In his new position, 
Khanfar now oversees the following bodies: 
 
-- Al Jazeera Arabic, est. 1996 
-- Al Jazeera International, to be launched later this year. 
-- Al Jazeera Arabic website (currently under AJ editorial 
control). 
-- Al Jazeera English website (currently under AJI editorial 
control). 
-- Al Jazeera Mubashir: Est. 2005. Live conferences, 
meetings, discussions, comparable to C-span. 
-- Al Jazeera Sports, est. 2003. 24/7 sports news channel. 
-- Al Jazeera Documentary - to be launched 2006. 24-hour 
Arabic programming, comparable to the Discovery Channel. 
-- Al Jazeera Training Center - est. Feb 2004, providing 
training to AJ and regional journalists; eyeing a regional 
role in media reform efforts. 
-- Al Jazeera Center for Studies - Doha-based think tank, 
est. 2005; designed to provide an academic Arab perspective 
on socio-political-economic issues affecting the region. 
-- Al Jazeera Mobile, bilingual, SMS-based breaking news 
service. 
 
¶3. (C) The exception to this list is the Al Jazeera 
Children's Channel (est. 2005, targets Arabic- speaking 
children aged 3-15; billed as "edutainment"), which Al 
Jazeera co-owns with Qatar Foundation. At ten percent, the AJ 
ownership of the children's channel is not large enough for 
it to be included an eventual business plan. Khanfar said he 
has been given a year to complete the integration process and 
to come up with a business model for privatization to present 
to the AJN Board of Directors. He stressed that the two 
satellite channels, AJ and AJI, will be editorially 
independent and will not subject to central control from AJN. 
He noted that AJN has created an IT directorate, an 
engineering directorate and an administrative directorate, 
but has not created an AJN news directorate. Each channel 
will keep their current news directors (Ahmed Sheikh in the 
case of AJ and Steve Cook in the case of AJI), and although 
there will inevitably be a degree of coordination between the 
two, there is no expectation of either's toeing a central 
editorial line. Khanfar described the AJN organizational 
chart as starting at the top with board chairman Sheikh Hamad 
bin Thamer, followed by the AJN Board itself, then the 
position of DG, who oversees the Executive Council, made up 
of the managing directors of the present channels (Nigel 
Parsons in the case of AJI and himself in the case of AJ, 
among others). The Executive Council would be the body most 
closely involved in the day-to-day running of the different 
AJ entities, he said. 
 
Will Khanfar stay on as MD of Al Jazeera? 
---------------------------------------- 
 
¶4. (C) Asked if he planned to stay on as Managing Director of 
Al Jazeera Arabic, Khanfar laughed and said: "I have a plan 
to replace myself." He said that although he is staying on 
for the moment at Al Jazeera Arabic's helm, he envisioned a 
gradual withdrawal as he becomes more involved in the 
business aspect of AJN operations, but he did not say whom he 
intended to replace him. 
 
Final goal: Privatization? 
-------------------------- 
 
¶5. (C) Khanfar said he will spend the coming year weighing 
three different business models that have been proposed to 
AJN for its eventual privatization (including one prepared by 
Ernst & Young, he said). His goal is to make a selection by 
year's end and propose it to the AJN Board of Directors for 
adoption. Privatizing the Al Jazeera entities as a package 
would make it a package worth three times Al Jazeera Arabic 
alone, a package that would also be "less troublesome, less 
scary" to the investor than Al Jazeera Arabic by itself, he 
said. When PAO said that speculation about Al Jazeera 
privatization has come and gone with regularity and no 
results over the last few years, he said, "That was because 
there was no mechanism on which to make a decision on 
privatization. Now we will have one." 
 
Hostage tapes 
------------- 
 
¶6. (C) PAO recalled Khanfar's conversation with Emboffs and 
U/S Hughes in February (Ref B and previous), in which the US 
petitioned Al Jazeera to reconsider its editorial policy and 
allow embassies whose nationals have been kidnapped in Iraq a 
physical copy of the videotapes sent to Al Jazeera by 
hostage-takers. Khanfar said he had raised the issue with his 
fellow board of directors and the board's decision had been 
negative. As he had explained previously, Khanfar said, Al 
Jazeera does not want to become embroiled in legal action 
surrounding the tapes and for that reason does not want to 
become part of any chain of evidence. He said, however, that 
law enforcement officials of the countries in question are 
welcome to view the tape on Al Jazeera premises at any time 
and for any length of time. PAO asked if future tapes of US 
hostages could be transmitted to the Al Jazeera bureau in 
Washington for examination by US authorities on Al Jazeera 
premises there, and Khanfar said, "Yes, of course," adding 
that AJ had already performed this service for German 
officials in the past. 
 
Interview with Iraqi hostage-taking group 
------------------------------------------ 
 
¶7. (C) PAO then referred to a March 25 Al Jazeera interview 
with a representative of the "Islamic Army in Iraq" who 
claimed to be part of a group that kidnapped journalists and 
executed them if they were found to be "spies." PAO asked how 
such an interview could be justified in light of Al Jazeera's 
stated policy of condemning kidnapping and violence against 
journalists. Khanfar said that this was not the first time 
this individual had been interviewed on Al Jazeera, although 
in the past interviews with him have been conducted by phone. 
He said the subject's message was "very political" and the 
interview was valid news, as he is a member of a current 
organization and gave important information about the 
organization itself. He also made an offer to negotiate with 
the United States, Khanfar said, adding that the original 
interview was much longer than the version that aired and 
that he himself had "personally intervened" to take out some 
"very strong statements" made by the interviewee.  PAO asked 
where the interview was filmed, and whether it was filmed in 
Baghdad. Khanfar said it was not filmed in Baghdad but, he 
said, "it is difficult to tell you where, because that was 
the condition of filming it, that we would not say." He said 
all he could say was that it was filmed by the Al Jazeera 
Beirut correspondent. 
 
Delay in launch of Al Jazeera International 
------------------------------------------- 
 
¶8. (C) Khanfar confirmed his own press recent statement 
announcing the probably delay of the launch of Al Jazeera 
International, due to technical reasons (a delay in 
delivering IT systems). He said the channel is now looking at 
an early summer launch, instead of a late spring one. 
 
Yousri Founda series on 9/11 
---------------------------- 
 
¶9. (C) PAO gave Khanfar a copy of February's DIA unclassified 
snippets and also a non-paper on a four-part series on 9/11 
prepared by Al Jazeera reporter Yousri Fouda which aired last 
September. The non-paper, prepared by IIP/SC's 
Counter-Misinformation team, criticized the series for 
espousing unfounded conspiracy theories concerning the events 
of 9/11.  When Khanfar heard Fouda's name he rolled his eyes 
and appeared to know immediately which series was in 
question. "I thought it was stupid myself," he said. He said 
channel editors had intervened to make the original series 
more balanced than it had started out, but he had received 
many complaints about the series nonetheless. He thanked PAO 
for the input. 
 
Comment: 
-------- 
 
¶10. (C) Khanfar was his usual urbane, articulate, 
professional self. At 38, he is relatively young to have 
attained a position of such influence. His vision is now 
clearly fixed on his new mandate, which is considerably wider 
and much more international in scope than the activities of 
the Arabic channel. His reference to making the Arabic 
channel more attractive to investors by "packaging" it within 
a group of less polarizing additional entities that will in 
turn treble the value of the original was a telling figure of 
speech. 
 
¶11. (C) As we have previously reported, there has been a 
considerable amount of tension between Al Jazeera and Al 
Jazeera International, with many viewing it as a de facto 
struggle for Arab/Islamist control of the Al Jazeera brand 
name, and supporting or opposing Khanfar's candidacy for the 
DG position on the grounds that he would impose such control 
over Al Jazeera International. His statements espousing and 
endorsing indepedent editorial directions for the two 
channels would seem to contradict this last view but we will 
continue to report on the politics of the situation as they 
develop. 
UNTERMEYER