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BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- Peter Arnett is back on the air from Baghdad.
Within days of being fired by NBC, Arnett found an unlikely new audience Thursday: the Dutch-speaking citizens of northern Belgium.
"Thanks Peter Arnett, we are proud to have you on our team," said VTM news anchor Dany Verstraeten after Arnett finished the first of his daily reports, which will be subtitled in Dutch, for the private Belgian TV network.
A Greek TV channel, state-run NET television, also announced Thursday that it hired Arnett for daily reports, which will be translated into Greek. In addition, Arnett is writing weekly articles for The Daily Mirror of London, a tabloid vehemently opposed to the war.
The American network fired Arnett on Monday for giving an unauthorized interview with state-run Iraqi TV, during which he said the U.S.-led war effort had initially failed because of Iraq's resistance.
NBC was angered because Arnett gave Sunday's interview without permission and presented opinion as fact.
Arnett, who apologized for his "misjudgment," told the Belgian network he was a "casualty of the information war."
"There are two wars taking place, Dany. You have the war of bullets and bombs, then you have the information war," he said.
"This caused a firestorm in America. I was called a traitor," he said.
Arnett, a New Zealander who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, covered the 1991 Gulf War for CNN.
(Copyright 2003 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)
