Hard-to-Find Radio Baghdad Tells Iraq’s Side : Media: Sometimes it’s there and sometimes it’s not. News is not one of its strong points.

NICOSIA, Cyprus —  It’s hard to find on the dial. Its signal is jammed and its studios have to move to avoid bombs, rockets and cruise missiles. There’s no sports news or top-40. The announcers seem to have taken voice training at the School for Drones. But for most of the world, Radio Baghdad is the main conduit for Iraq’s side of the Gulf War.

Every day diplomats, intelligence agents, journalists and tens of thousands of Arabs search for the official Iraqi radio over at least five shortwave bands. Sometimes it’s there, sometimes not.

Friday, for instance, it was nearly impossible for the Nicosia monitors to pick up the signal in the morning. Later in the day, the monotones of the broadcasters came in fairly clear, except when the American-led coalition appeared to be jamming the signal.

Monitors here keep tape recorders going 24 hours a day to pick up the signal from the sporadic broadcasts.

“We can never be sure when it’s on the air,” one monitor said. “And when we find it, we can’t always hear what it says.”

Actually, there is a certain myth about how Radio Baghdad is monitored. The British Broadcasting Corp. and other news organizations are given or take credit for most of the monitoring.

However, most of the listening is done by American intelligence agencies and distributed to journalists in the region, usually by the BBC. The private monitors, usually free-lance journalists, use their information for their own clients.

Diplomatic sources said that, in addition to jamming, Radio Baghdad suffers severely from the allied raids, which have targeted Iraq’s communications systems. “They just can’t sit in a soundproofed room and blabber away,” a source said. “There is evidence they (Radio Baghdad) are on the run.”

Perhaps so--but broadcasts do get out and what they say can be truly amazing. There are claims of hundreds of American and allied aircraft shot down and of utterly astounding successes by Iraqi missiles against Israeli and Saudi Arabian targets.

There are constant calls for Arab and Muslim uprisings in the name of a “holy war” against the West. And the broadcasts are notable for extraordinary examples of personal vituperation and creative curses.

Some of what Radio Baghdad said Friday:

The announcer--who might as well have been reading hog reports over a rural Nebraska station for all the emotion he showed--called British Prime Minister John Major “an ally of the devil” and asked if he believed “that he had sent his forces on a pleasure trip” when he warned Parliament of a long war.

“If Major managed to address a piece of advice to his House of Commons . . . he would find nobody to advise him to receive the bad news with self-control as all of them will be busy receiving the coffins of their dead.”

“The enemy carried out 111 sorties on our beloved country and on our forces deployed on the border. With the help of God (God gets a lot of credit on Radio Baghdad, including personally guiding the Scud missiles that hit Israel) and the efforts of our zealous men, 14 air targets (as allied planes and missiles are always called) . . . have been downed.”

“Total defeat will be inflicted on all the evil aggressors without exception, beginning with the war criminal, racist and fascist Bush and the well-known fascist (Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak) Shamir, and ending with the midget traitors who are allied with the enemies of the nation.”

Contradicting the U.S. Navy’s claim that it seized the Kuwaiti island of Qaruh, Radio Baghdad said Iraq pulled its forces and boats from the island for “military considerations,” not because of “any alleged victory by those deprived of victory.”

But not all of Radio Baghdad is sheer vitriol. Sometimes there is real news.

Another broadcast Friday announced that for the time being, at least, captured allied personnel no longer will be shown on Iraqi television, an act that had been widely denounced as humiliating and a violation of the Geneva accords governing the treatment of prisoners of war.

More than just the news itself, diplomats saw evidence in the broadcast that Iraq was bowing to international criticism, a signal that Saddam Hussein can be influenced from the outside.

There were other signals of how the Iraqi government views its position in world opinion, particularly the general acceptance that the allied raids have done little civilian harm. After days of American and allied claims that attacks on Iraq had been limited to military and related targets with few civilian casualties, Friday’s broadcasts retorted:

“Let the criminals know that their lies have been exposed . . . All the talk of the criminals in the White House is heard by our civilian sons living in Baghdad’s residential neighborhoods hit by the shells of their ravens (another name for allied warplanes). Their talk is also heard by the nomads who live in the Karbala desert and in the wilderness in the Al-Anbar, and who know how in one raid the ravens bombed tents inhabited by civilians, killing more than 20 people--men, women and infants.”

The broadcast was linked to stories by Peter Arnett, the lone American reporter in Baghdad, noting that his CNN reports substantiated the claims of severe civilian damage.

Day by day, there is a certain sameness to Radio Baghdad and listeners can become calloused to the incredible claims, personal insults and even the creative curses.

But there are times when a listener is brought up short. As one announcer ended a typical broadcast, suddenly music came up and for a moment the airwaves were full of the sounds of the symphony “The Planets” by the British composer Gustav Holst.

TUNING IN ON SHORTWAVE RADIO

The Gulf War has created a boom in demand for shortwave radios, which enable listeners to pick up signals from around the world--including the war zone. The table below lists broadcasts from Mideast stations, most of which are low-power. Note: The optimum times for monitoring these are between 5 and 7 a.m. and from 4 to 7 p.m. PST.

Time Radio Station Frequency in MHz 4 p.m. PST Kol Israel, Jerusalem 7.465, 9.435, 11.605 5 p.m. Kol Israel, Jerusalem 7.465, 9.435, 11.605 Radio Baghdad, Iraq 11.755, 11.810, 11.830, 21.585 6 p.m. Kol Israel, Jerusalem 7.465, 9.435, 11.605 Radio Baghdad, Iraq 11.755, 11.810, 11.830, 21.585 Radio Cairo, Egypt 9.475, 9.675 7 p.m. Radio Baghdad, Iraq 11.755, 11.810, 11.830 Radio Cairo, Egypt 9.475, 9.675 United Arab Emirates, 11.945, 13.675. Dubai 15.400, 15.435 8 p.m. Voice of Turkey, Ankara 9.445, 17.880 9 p.m. Kol Israel, Jerusalem 9.435, 11.605, 11.655, 12.077, 15.640, 17.575 United Arab Emirates, 15.435, 17.830, Dubai 21.700 10 p.m. Voice of Hope, Lebanon 6.280 Radio Baghdad, Iraq 11.860 (Baghdad Betty) 11 p.m. Voice of Hope, Lebanon 6.280 Radio Baghdad, Iraq 11.860 (Baghdad Betty) Midnight Voice of Islam, Bangladesh 15.195, 11.705 Voice of Hope, Lebanon 6.280 Radio Baghdad, Iraq 11.860 (Baghdad Betty) 1 a.m. Voice of Hope, Lebanon 6.280

Source: Communications Monitoring Assn., West Los Angeles chapter