DUBAI - Saudi Arabia's banned emigre opposition inaugurated its first radio broadcasts to the kingdom late Saturday from an unspecified "European country".
Listeners across the Arabian peninsula can tune into the Arabic-language "Voice of Reform" station launched by the London-based Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia (MIRA) on the 11.096 MHz frequency on the Hotbird satellite.
The satellite channel will be operated 24 hours a day and will be supplemented by daily short-wave broadcasts on 39.35 metres between 1900 and 2100 GMT, MIRA spokesman Saad al-Faqih said.
Programming would include "live phone-ins with the movement's spokesman and other personalities, particularly Saudi ones, as well as news and cultural broadcasts," said Faqih.
"It's the first time that the opposition has been able to speak directly to the Saudi people."
"The last Saudi opposition radio dates back to the 1960s when a programme run by Arab nationalist Dhahayan al-Dhahayan ... was broadcast from Egypt in the days of president Gamal Abdel Nasser."
Faqih said he was unsure how Washington would react to the new station, given its unhappiness with Riyadh's efforts to clamp down on terror financing since the September 11, 2001 attacks.
"Perhaps Washington will appreciate it given the Saudi authorities' hesitancy about fully cooperating in providing the United States with information about the activities of Islamist groups in the region," he said.
"Or maybe they'll be apprehensive about broadcasts which carry the hallmarks of the Islamic opposition."
"But it's the Saudi government which will be really uncomfortable about programmes which allow Saudis to express themselves freely and without comeback by taking advantage of new technologies such as the Internet."
MIRA was formed in 1996 after a split in the Committee for the Defence of Legitimate Rights established by dissident Muslim clerics three years earlier who accused the Saudi regime of corruption and authoritarianism.
The CDLR was immediately banned in the kingdom and its leader Mohammed al-Masari fled first to Yemen and then London.
The Saudi authorities have long made strenuous efforts to stop the two opposition groups getting their message across inside the kingdom, putting strong pressure on broadcasters around the region not to give them a platform.
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