LONDON - In the early days of August 1998, the Arabic-language newspaper Al-Hayat published a news article conveying a warning from an obscure group called the Islamic Army, known to be linked to a well-born Saudi named Osama bin Laden. U.S. embassies, the warning said, were about to be bombed.
A few days later, on Aug. 7, nearly simultaneous explosions occurred at the U.S. embassies in Nairobi, Kenya, and Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, killing 224.
From that same platform - Al-Hayat, published daily in London since 1988 - Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has appeared in recent months using interviews with the newspaper to explain U.S. policy to its 200,000 or so readers, many of them policy-makers in the Middle East. Egyptian and Syrian leaders have taken to the newspaper's pages to explain their foreign policies to the world's diplomats.
The range of views appearing in Al-Hayat - from terrorists and diplomats and heads of state - has solidified its position as the most influential Arabic newspaper, a platform for countries to announce foreign policy initiatives and for opposition groups to promote agendas of their own.
"It has access to an enormous field of contributors," said Paul Lalor, Middle East research fellow at the International Institute of Strategic Studies in London. "It's as good as any newspaper published in the English language, and it's enormously important in terms of the intellectual debate and with people who have direct effect on policy."
What the newspaper lacks is influence on the broader Arab public, much of which gets its news from Al-Jazeera, the Arabic-language television station based in Qatar. Because of coverage that tends toward the sensational, the station is often blamed for appealing to - and encouraging - anti-U.S. sentiment.
Now, though, Al-Hayat is taking its first steps into television, by combining forces with Lebanese Broadcasting Corp. International. The network, based in Beirut, reaches most of the Arab world and is enormously popular for its entertainment programming.
Al-Hayat's television programming is expected to provide an outlet where U.S. diplomats can explain the country's foreign policies not just to an elite, but to the masses.
By month's end, Al-Hayat will use members of its 300-person staff to provide live reports from around the world, bringing stories from its grainy black-and-white pages to the screen 3 1/2 hours a day.
180,000 circulation
With editions printed in London, New York, Frankfurt, Cairo, Beirut, Bahrain, Dubai and Saudi Arabia, Al-Hayat has a circulation of about 180,000 copies a day. Recent front pages included these headlines: "Israelis Break Into Arafat's Compound"; "Saddam Confirms Iraq Has No Weapons Of Mass Destruction - Rumsfeld Advises Him To 'Exile Himself'"; "German Justice Minister Compares Bush To Hitler."
Al-Hayat's editorial page has often been critical of what it calls American hypocrisy, citing the United States' tacit approval of Israel's treatment of Palestinians. Al-Hayat's columnists have warned that the bombing of Afghanistan will do nothing to diminish terrorism. And the paper garnered attention this summer by publishing a poem praising Palestinian suicide bombers by Saudi Arabia's ambassador to Great Britain.
"We've never tried to be popular," said Robert Jureidini, director of Al-Hayat's news and business operations. "We've tried to be serious, we've tried to include everyone's points of view, but we've never tried to keep this point of view down or that point of view down to be popular with this group or that group."
The views that have appeared in the newspaper, in fact, have sparked attacks by militants. In 1966, an assassin shot and killed Kamel Mroue, who founded the newspaper in 1946 in Beirut, giving it the Arabic name "life." According to Lebanese investigators, he was killed because of criticism of the regime of Egypt's then-president, Gamel Abdel Nasser.
Thirteen bombing attempts were made against the paper before it was forced to shut down in 1976 because of the civil war in Lebanon. It reopened in London in 1986, taking advantage of the presence of exiled Arab journalists.
Since then, the paper has thrived politically, if not financially. Financed by Saudi Prince Khaled ibn Sultan ibn Abdulaziz, a nephew of King Fahd and commander of Saudi forces during the Persian Gulf war, the paper has lost an estimated $160 million since its relaunch.
"London is expensive, but what we get out of it is basically being in a country where there is no interference on our freedom to publish what we want to publish," Jureidini said.
Reported invasion
Al-Hayat is hesitant to criticize Saudi Arabia, and Jureidini acknowledges that the paper will often withhold relatively unimportant news that might get it banned in certain countries. But Al-Hayat has at various times been banned in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Syria and elsewhere. "We only hold off on the little things," Jureidini said, "so we can print what is truly important."
When Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990, newspapers and television stations based in the Middle East did not report the event. Al-Hayat did.
"We knew it might get us banned, but this is one that I am talking about, that you have to report if you are a serious newspaper," Jureidini said. "We recognized the repercussions right away. There was no way we could not report it and still be a credible newspaper."
The danger to the newspaper has not ended. In 1997, someone mailed 14 letter bombs to Al-Hayat's headquarters and its bureaus in New York, Washington and Riyadh. Again, Islamic militants were suspected.
Jihad Khazen, among the most influential journalists in the Middle East and a columnist for Al-Hayat who is coordinating the move into television, said the newspaper has been the target of violent attacks precisely because of its mission: to provide news in context while providing a forum for a variety of opinions.
"There are enough problems without adding to them through misunderstandings," Khazen said. "We've tried in the paper to be open to all sides, and we'll try the same with the television."
Powell has used Al-Hayat to assure the Arab world that the Bush administration supports creation of a Palestinian state. In April, the group Army for the Liberation of the Holy Sites, which has been tied to al-Qaida, claimed responsibility for a bombing in Tunisia that claimed 16 lives outside a synagogue, writing to Al-Hayat that more bombings would follow if the Palestinian issue was not resolved.
The newspaper printed a letter in April reported to be from Mullah Mohammed Omar, the Taliban leader who U.S. authorities thought might have been killed in the bombing of Afghanistan. Israel and Syria spent months using Al-Hayat as a conduit on their views about a peace plan. Saudi Arabia used the paper to let the United States know that it was reversing course and would allow the country to be used as a launching site for an attack against Iraq, provided the United Nations agreed to the use of force.
"The history is quite remarkable," said Lalor of the strategic institute. "I think since Sept. 11, Western policy-makers are starting to recognize the importance of the Arab press in general and Al-Hayat in particular and paying more attention."
A spokesman for the U.S. State Department says Al-Hayat's influence should not be underestimated and diplomats have been working steadily with all the Arab media to try to get U.S. views to as many people as possible. Since Sept. 11, he says, State Department employees are more closely coordinating public diplomacy efforts and monitoring the Arab media.
They were not monitoring as closely before Sept. 11 and certainly not as closely in 1998, when another warning was published in Al-Hayat from another group associated with bin Laden, the Islamic Front.
"The coming days, God willing, will see that America meets a black fate, similar to what happened in the Soviet Union," the warning said. "There will be more attacks."