Replies

U.S. Questions Cuba About Jamming TV Signals to Iran.

WASHINGTON — The United States has confronted Cuban representatives in Washington about whether Cuba has been blocking U.S. satellite signals used to broadcast television to Iran.

We have indeed raised the jamming with the government of Cuba. I think I would say the interference with Loral Skynet's (search) commercial satellite transmissions appears to be emanating from the vicinity of Cuba. It does appear to be intentional. So, yesterday, we called in Cuban government representatives in Washington, and we formally requested the Cuban government to look into the matter," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said Friday.

National Iranian Television (search), based in Los Angeles, and the U.S. government's Voice of America (search) send signals from various points in the United States to Telstar-12, located above the North Atlantic Ocean. The signal is then redistributed and sent down to Iran.

But officials say a jamming signal that basically scrambles the broadcast before it reaches television sets has been traced to an area near Havana, Cuba. The site identified by U.S. satellite photos is a facility in Cuba known as Lourdes, built back in 1962 with the help of the Soviets.

NITV has been broadcasting uncensored news, talk and entertainment into Iran since 2000, and Iran's Islamic government has accused the television company of stoking student protest movements against the government. U.S. officials believe Iran contracted Cuba to do the job. The two are close allies, with Cuba getting most of its oil from Iran.

The blocking comes on the eve of a four-year anniversary of large student protests and follows a recent surge of protests by students who want the government overthrown. Iranian President Mohammad Khatami has offered to resign to appease the protesters.

Kenneth Tomlinson, chairman of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which oversees Voice of America, said that if officials in Tehran had asked Havana to help, the goal would have been "to block the flow of news in a time when they obviously thought they were going to loose control of their own people."

The Iranian government denies that it has anything to do with any jamming of signals. Iran would be unable to block the signal on its own because it must be jammed from a position in the Atlantic Ocean, under the satellites.

Cuban authorities have long scrambled signals by the U.S. government toward its country, but no country has ever blocked transmissions between two other countries, particularly one in another hemisphere, a U.S. official said earlier this week.

"This is truly unprecedented for a country in the Western Hemisphere to interfere with broadcasting going to a country in the Middle East," said Zia Atabay, president of NITV.

Atabay acknowledges that he and other independent Iranian programmers may pose a threat to Iran's religious leadership by providing uncensored information, but he doesn't apologize.

"Now, when they are shutting my voice and my channel out, it means they are cutting all the voices in Iran," he said.

Tomlinson said the implications for the future of international satellite broadcasting are "ominous."

The Cuban Interests Section (search) in Washington did not respond to requests for comment, but a senior State Department official, who spoke on condition of anonymity said, "We are giving them the chance to find it and close it down."

In Cuba, Ricardo Alarcon, president of the Cuban National Assembly, told the news agency Prensa Latina that the accusations were part of an anti-Cuban ploy by the United States.

"You never know what they'll come up with to justify aggression against the island," said Alarcon, a top adviser to President Fidel Castro on U.S. affairs

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,92348,00.html