VOA's Baghdad Bureau Still Closed After Six Months

[Rose Siding]

The Voice of America's bureau in Baghdad has been closed for the past six months, ever since the government-funded agency withdrew its only reporter in Iraq after she was fired upon in an ambush and her security guard was later killed.

All Western news organizations have struggled with the dangerous conditions in Iraq, which have led to such high-profile incidents as the kidnapping of Christian Science Monitor reporter Jill Carroll and the wounding of ABC News anchor Bob Woodruff. But for a federally funded information service to pull out of Baghdad for such a prolonged period raises questions about the Bush administration's insistence that conditions there are gradually improving.
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Asked why VOA has not sent another reporter to Iraq, Ryu said, "They didn't have any volunteers to replace me."
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Ryu, 43, came to believe that her phone was being tapped when she dialed a number in the United States, and the call was answered by a man identifying himself as a member of the Iraqi Interior Ministry. Feeling "very unsettled," Ryu decided she had to leave Iraq and has returned to her previous posting in Nairobi.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/05/22/AR2006052201386.html