In the Mideast

The CABLE NEWS NETWORK said it has allowed Iraqi officials to use its satellite telephone in Baghdad, but only for limited purposes involving visas for journalists to enter Iraq. Ed Turner, CNN executive vice president, in a statement from the firm’s headquarters in Atlanta, confirmed an Austrian radio report that CNN allowed Iraqi Information Ministry officials to use the phone to call the Jordanian capital to arrange visas for journalists. Baghdad has been subjected to heavy bombing by the U.S.-led alliance and is cut off from normal phone communications with the outside world.