TV Networks Frustrated Over Efforts to Report From Iraq

American television networks remained frustrated Saturday in efforts to broadcast reports from Iraq, where only CBS still has correspondents on the ground, network officials said.

Iraqi officials “invited” ABC correspondents Ted Koppel and Forrest Sawyer to leave the country with their crews within days of arriving Tuesday, ABC spokesman Scott Richardson said.

Koppel, who had interviewed Iraqi Foreign Minister Tarik Aziz, was ordered out of the country. He returned late Friday to Washington. Sawyer was able to stay just one more day, Richardson said.

Koppel had been the first Western network representative to reach Baghdad, arriving a day ahead of CBS’s Dan Rather. NBC’s Tom Brokaw got only as far as Saudi Arabia.

In Saudi Arabia, news executives have expressed frustration with the Pentagon, complaining that U.S. military officials were significantly restricting the effectiveness of the pool of reporters and photographers covering American troops taking up defensive positions in that Arab country.

Richardson said ABC has “no one in Iraq now,” but 12 correspondents and producers and crews remain in other Middle East locations.

NBC has 70 employees around the area, including Jordan, Egypt and Israel, but not in Iraq, spokeswoman Katherine McQuay said. Garrick Utley was scheduled to report from Jordan today.

From Baghdad, Rather has been unable to transmit picture coverage, but has reported by way of telephone lines. He interviewed Aziz on Saturday, CBS said. Correspondent Allen Pizzey also was filing reports.

Network spokesman Tom Goodman said the CBS news crew arrived in Iraq on Wednesday by way of Jordan and that it was unclear how long they would be able to stay.

He declined to discuss in detail any security concerns the network might have about its employees in Iraq, which has said it will keep detained citizens of “aggressive nations” at military and other key installations in Iraq and Kuwait as long as it is threatened with war.

“At this point, we’re not really saying much about them,” Goodman said.