COMMUNICATIONS : Radio Activists Hope to Keep Airwaves Alive : A presidential task force wants to save Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty from the cost-cutting ax.

WASHINGTON —  The Bush Administration, hoping to reap a modest peace dividend from the end of the Cold War by closing down Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty, has encountered surprising resistance from a task force it established to study the idea.

In a report to the White House, the 11-member Presidential Task Force on Government International Radio Broadcasting has recommended not only continuing the two services indefinitely but creating a third aimed at China and other Asian Communist nations.

An inadvertent result of the recommendation has been to fuel a long-simmering dispute between proponents of the activist style of Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty operations and those who favor the more neutral Voice of America.

President Bush could disregard the report and eliminate the budget for the two stations for 1993, but such an action would be unusual.

BACKGROUND: With the coming of democracy to the former Soviet empire, State Department policy-makers and White House budgeters believed that they could phase out the two stations and divert the money to expand the Voice of America into a more global service comparable to the British Broadcasting Corp.

But in hearings conducted by the task force at the request of the White House, advocates for continuing the stations cited emotional support from Polish President Lech Walesa, Czechoslovak President Vaclav Havel and Hungarian Prime Minister Jozsef Antall.

All called the stations essential to their countries, saying they have few professional broadcasters untainted by association with previous Communist regimes.

Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty were begun in the early 1950s to provide news free of censorship to Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union.

Incorporated as private businesses, the two “surrogate services”--so called because they serve as substitutes for local news operations--are financed by Congress through the Board for International Broadcasting, a group of private citizens appointed by the President.

The 1992 budget for the two services was $212 million; the 1993 request is not yet available.

From the beginning, they gave listeners news of their own region as well as information about the outside world. With the principal transmitter near Munich, the two stations had auxiliary transmitters in Spain and Portugal, enabling them--despite frequent jamming--to reach a wide audience.

The Voice of America, operated since World War II as an agency of the government, with a 1992 budget of $365 million, has long sought to become a truly worldwide service. VOA coverage has been weak over large areas of Asia and Africa, primarily because of budgetary constraints, its backers say.

ISSUES: Although VOA traditionally has presented world news and official Washington’s views in a carefully non-polemical style, it has also been able to produce “targeted” broadcasting with higher local news content aimed at a specific region, such as the Persian Gulf. VOA proponents insist that targeted broadcasting would be more efficient than a separate new radio arm directed at China.

The cost of a station beamed at China was estimated by one source at $100 million in start-up expenses plus $30 million a year thereafter.

Betty Bao Lord, wife of former Ambassador to Beijing Winston Lord, who with her husband was credited with convincing the task force of the need for a station beamed at China, suggested that a surrogate station could employ Chinese students as economical sources of news and commentary.

Opponents say a new station would require a large research base and many skilled broadcasters to re-create the success of the European surrogates.

As the dismemberment of the Soviet empire continues, for example, Radio Liberty may for some time offer the only way for Ukrainians to hear what is happening in Armenia or other republics grappling with their new independence.