NBC, ISRAEL REACH DOCUMENTARY PACT

NBC executives conceded Friday that a controversial documentary on Israel omitted some facts and agreed to give a government official air time on its morning “Today” show to voice Israel’s objections to the program, officials said.

The agreement concluded two days of talks between government and network officials over “Six Days Plus 20 Years: A Dream is Dying,” a July 1 NBC documentary that examined the problems of 20 years of occupation of territory captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.

(In a separate announcment issued later on Friday in New York, NBC News President Lawrence K. Grossman said, “We stand fully behind the documentary.”

(Grossman said NBC wanted to correct “misimpressions emanating from Israel” and insisted that NBC “extended an invitation” to Israeli officials to appear on NBC’s “Today” show “to discuss the controversies stimulated by the broadcast” and that “two minor so-called factual inaccuracies . . . do not in any way impair or diminish the quality and character of this outstanding NBC News special hour.”)

Israeli officials characterized the program as “biased and slanted” against the Jewish state, and Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir and two other leaders retaliated by refusing interviews by the network for more than a week.

“Finally they have admitted there were some inaccuracies there,” said Shamir’s media adviser, Avi Pazner, after a meeting with an NBC vice president, Ed Planer, and Israel bureau chief Larry Weidman.

Weidman said that the agreement was reached “in an amicable fashion,” and said that NBC characterized the problems in the broadcast as “quite minor.”

“We are very pleased that we have the opportunity to air our misgivings about this program,” said Pazner, who said he would probably be the official on the “Today” show.

“We will recommend to our superiors that we go back to a normal relationship with NBC,” including granting interviews to the network, he said.

Foreign Minister Shimon Peres and Defense Minister Yitzhak Rabin also participated in the interview boycott.

The documentary, which showed soldiers beating West Bank Arabs and likened Israeli rule over the territory to South Africa’s apartheid racial policies, was made to mark the 20th anniversary of the 1967 Arab-Israeli war.

Israel took issue with explanations that Palestinians are required to obtain a license to grow and sell produce in the West Bank and that West Bank Arabs must present a permit when traveling into Israel and abroad.

Weidman said that the program failed to note that all Israeli farmers are required to obtain the same license and that the Arab travel permits are identity cards required of all Israeli residents.

The agreement concluded four hours of meetings over two days between Pazner, Weidman, Planer, Army Lt. Col Raanan Gissin and Washington Embassy spokesman Yossi Gal.

“We will not issue a joint communique because we are not two countries at war,” said Pazner. “But we wrote down, all of us, a seven-point agreement which details what we have reached.”