Alistair Campbell, a top aide and strategist for Blair, told Australian radio that concerns were growing that the Arabic media was whipping up popular anger in the Middle East over the war to topple Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"We have to be honest about this, there is not much understanding or appreciation in the Arab world for what we say, and we have to address that," Campbell told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation.

"We have set up a system now where during the current period of military action, and hopefully beyond, we are getting a minister every day to set aside one hour in their diary to do Arabic media, because it is important, it matters that they hear what we are genuinely saying, as opposed to what is being mediated to them," he said.

Blair discussed the problem at a meeting with Foreign Secretary Jack Straw and other ministers last week after a broadcast on the Arabic-language television network Al-Jazeera referred to allegations that British troops had executed Iraqi prisoners of war, Campbell said.

"Complete fiction, but there it was aired. Now that is something that we have to get out there, knowing that it is happening, dealing with it, challenging it, rebutting it," he said.

To counter the negative reporting, London set up a special "Islamic media unit" within the Foreign Office, with an official assigned "virtually full time" to speak in Arabic to the Arabic media, he said.

"We have a significant outreach communications team that is constantly trying to get our message out there," he said.

"And when you look at some of the output from not just al-Jazeera, but some of the other Arab media, we have got a huge uphill battle on our hands and we have got to engage in it," he said.

Campbell, considered one of the most influential insiders in Blair's government and one who rarely gives media interviews, also hit out at Western media for the way they have covered the Anglo-American-led war.

"Dictatorships are at a huge in-built advantage when it comes to public opinion," Campbell said.

"(In) democracies we are expected to explain, we cannot tell lies in the way that dictatorships tell lies all the time ... it gives them an advantage in the way this thing is prosecuted," he said.

Campbell also chided reporters embedded with British or US troops as too eager to further their own careers rather than report accurately on the "big picture".

"You've got all the correspondents there, most of whom aren't used to the situation they're in so therefore are finding it novel and exciting but who are also in direct competition within their own network to get on air," Campbell said.

"What they want to do is be telling their desk 'Look where I am this is where it's really exciting, where I am is where it's really interesting, what I want to say is the most interesting part of this whole conflict'."

"But they don't know that, because they only have access if you like to a

snapshot, they don't have the big picture."

WAR.WIRE