Monday November 24, 2003 4:01 PM

By BASSEM MROUE

Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD, Iraq (AP) - One of the Middle East's biggest television news networks agreed Monday to halt reports from Iraq after the U.S.-appointed government raided its offices, banned its broadcasts and threatened to imprison journalists.

The government accused Al-Arabiya of ``inciting murder'' for broadcasting an audio tape a week ago of a voice it said belonged to Saddam Hussein.

``We have issued a warning to Al-Arabiya and we will sue,'' said Jalal Talabani, the current president of the Iraqi Governing Council. ``Al-Arabiya incites murder because it's calling for killings through the voice of Saddam Hussein. ... Inciting murder or violence is illegal under the laws of the entire world.''

He said Al-Arabiya would be banned from working in Iraq for ``a certain time,'' which he didn't specify.

Outside the station, Al-Arabiya's chief Baghdad editor, Wahhad Yacoub, said it would cease broadcasting reports from Iraq until the matter could be resolved, although he said the station would continue to report on Iraq from its headquarters in the city of Dubai, in the United Arab Emirites.

Earlier Monday, about 20 Iraqi police officers raided Al-Arabiya's offices in Baghdad's Mansour neighborhood, making lists of equipment to be seized if it did not comply with the order, said station correspondent Ali al-Khatib, reporting live from the Iraqi capital.

The officers also raided the Middle East Broadcasting Center, a mostly entertainment network that shares offices with Al-Arabiya and is owned by the same Saudi company.

The correspondent said the officers told employees they were banned from broadcasting any reports from Iraq, and that they would be fined $1,000 and imprisoned for a year for each violation.

He also said the police carried an order from the Governing Council and told Al-Arabiya the council might reconsider its decision if the news channel writes a letter pledging never to encourage terrorism.

In the audiotape purported to be Saddam, broadcast Nov. 16, the voice urged Iraqis to step up their resistance to the U.S.-led occupation.

The speaker told Iraqis that the ``road of jihad (holy war) and resistance'' is the only one to make the ``armies of the unjust occupation leave our country.'' He also criticized Iraqis who cooperate with coalition forces, calling them ``stray dogs that walk alongside the caravan.''

The CIA said the technical quality of the tape was too poor to reach any conclusions about the speaker's identity. President Bush dismissed it as propaganda.

The Paris-based media watchdog group, Reporters Without Borders, immediately denounced the action of the Governing Council. It called the closure a violation of freedom of the press and said it represented ``methods ... that are contrary to the promises of setting up a democracy in Iraq.''

``If the Iraqi council wants to complain about coverage of Al-Arabiya, they should directly approach the station rather than close its office down,'' the statement said.

Al-Arabiya has clashed with authorities before for its coverage of Iraq. In July, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz said Al-Arabiya and another Arab news channel, Al-Jazeera, incited violence against American forces with slanted reports.

In September, the Governing Council temporarily banned Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera from entering government buildings and news conferences, accusing them of being aware of attacks on American troops before they occurred.

And last week, U.S. Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld called the two stations ``violently anti-coalition'' as he announced the planned launch of a U.S.-run satellite channel to compete with the wildly popular news stations.

Al-Arabiya was launched shortly before the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq. The channel was started as a new venture of Middle East News, a Dubai-based production company that also runs the Middle East Broadcasting Center. It is owned by the brother-in-law of Saudi