In its war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban, the US can rely on intelligence from satellites orbiting the earth. But there is one satellite America cannot control - the one that beams the al-Jazeera news channel across the Middle East from its studios in Qatar.

In spite of the efforts of the US administration and of Tony Blair - who this week spoke on al-Jazeera in an effort to win over Arab minds - the information war is proving tougher than destroying airfields in Afghanistan. That was evident not only across the Gulf states this week but in Washington too.

Just as the 1991 Gulf war played to the strengths of CNN, the Atlanta-based television channel, this one has been the making of al-Jazeera. The bearded face of Taysir Alloumi, its Syrian-born correspondent in Kabul, has become a fixture in the Arab world. Al-Jazeera was chosen by Mr bin Laden to carry his videotaped call for a holy war as US bombs started to hit Kabul. It also had the only film of the bombing and its after-effects.

So effective was Mr bin Laden's broadcast that Condoleezza Rice, George W. Bush's national security adviser, tried to stop US networks airing it repeatedly. After persuading the heads of the news divisions of ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN and Fox to restrain themselves, she appealed to the editors of leading US newspapers not to publish full transcripts.

Ms Rice is reported to have held several frantic phone conversations last weekend with editors at The Washington Post. She urged them not to publish in the following day's paper large parts of a report by veteran Watergate reporter Bob Woodward that apparently contained important pieces of classified information leaked to him.

The stated reason for her interventions was the risk of a threat that Mr bin Laden might have been using the broadcast to transmit coded instructions to his followers to prepare for their next attack. But it seems improbable that "sleeper" units of the al-Qaeda terrorist network in the US would be sitting glued to ABC World News Tonight on the off- chance that they might get a signal from their leader.

The more likely reason was hinted at by Ari Fleischer, the White House spokesman. "At best, Osama bin Laden's message is propaganda, calling on people to kill Americans. At worst, he could be issuing orders," he said, telling reporters about Ms Rice's conference calls.

With fear of another terrorist assault running high, the US administration could probably go further in limiting free speech. The response of the television executives this week shows that they understand the public mood. There is little enthusiasm for whining by media types at the best of times. And when Americans feel that their very existence threatened, resistance is probably pointless.

It will be far harder for the US to influence the information flow outside its borders. That is a testament to how much things have changed in the Arab world since the 1991 Gulf war, when Saudi Arabia and Egypt were an integral part of the allied coalition and most of the region's media were firmly under their control.

A decade later, the Middle East has changed. Controls over print and broadcast media have been somewhat relaxed. So has the widespread tendency of editors to exercise self-censorship. As a result, after initial condemnations of the terrorist attacks on the US, much of the focus this week in the Arab press has been on the fate of Afghan civilians in the US-led strikes.

Editorials often start with hints of understanding of the US need for military action but end with warnings and apprehensiveness. "It is difficult for any Arab or Muslim country, however co-operative it is with the US, to mobilise people to support the war, as it is difficult for it to orchestrate internal media campaigns to speak of the benefits of US policy," noted the pan-Arab al-Hayat daily.

Such comments reflect the region's deep-rooted resentment towards US foreign policy and a certain readiness among ordinary Arabs to believe anyone - including the fundamentalist Taliban with which they share few values - rather than listen to Washington. "The reality today is that resentment towards the US and refusal of its policies run so deep, and are so widespread, that it is difficult for whatever it does to be acceptable," says Mohammad al-Sayed Said, deputy director of Cairo's Al-Ahram Center for Strategic Studies.

The challenge faced by the US is partly the result of a late realisation of the relevance of Arab public opinion. For a long time after the Gulf war, the US assumed that its allies in the region - most of which are authoritarian regimes - could impose their views on their people.

The error of this approach has become apparent in recent years. The plight of Iraqis living under United Nations sanctions moved public opinion and forced rulers to distance themselves from US policy towards Iraq. The US message that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the effects of sanctions was largely ignored. "It's crazy that Iraq got its story out over the past 10 years. It has a lousy story to tell, yet everyone believes it," says a western diplomat.

The US now faces a further difficulty. The war on terrorism comes after a year in which Arab public opinion's image of Washington has been shaped by the Palestinian intifada, or uprising against Israeli occupation. Tele-vision pictures of rock-throwing Palestinian youths killed by sophisticated Israeli weaponry have fed anger towards US policy in the Middle East.

Negative perceptions of the US - and Mr bin Laden's attempt to exploit the Palestinian issue to justify his terror - have militated against the US in its efforts to explain the bombing of Taliban targets. "For the Arabs, the image of this war - that of a rich, strong superpower hitting a small country - doesn't lend itself to sympathy and creates a gap that cannot be bridged by propaganda," says Mr Said.

US officials say Washington now recognises that not enough effort has been exerted to get its message across. "We don't have enough Arabic speakers among senior officials to participate in talk shows and relatively few experts that will appear on stations (such as) al-Jazeera. They don't like to be put in that position," says an official.

Both the US and Britain are now stepping up their public diplomacy, with Washington planning to develop an advertising campaign and buy air time on Arab television stations as well as creating an Arabic radio service. US pressure is also likely to be applied on the Qatari government to rein in al-Jazeera and tone down its coverage.

Commentators in the Arab world, however, warn that targeting the satellite station could backfire. "If you fight al-Jazeera and produce another double standard in US policy, you say that the west is allowed a free press but Arabs are not," says Saad Djabbar, a Middle East political analyst who has often appeared on the channel. "Attacking al-Jazeera is attacking something Arab people cherish."

Copyright: The Financial Times Limited