Excerpt from report by French news agency AFP
Paris, 1 February 2010: European satellite operator Eutelsat on Monday [1 February] denied succumbing to Russian pressure to end broadcasts by Pervyy Kavkazskiy, a TV channel broadcasting from Georgia that is depicted as the first Russian-language channel in the Caucasus not to be under Kremlin control.
Eutelsat said it had broadcast the channel for the trial period of a week which began and ended on the agreed dates and that it was now awaiting the signing of a contract to resume broadcasting.
“From our point of view there’s no reason not to sign a contract with them,” Eutelsat spokeswoman Vanessa O’Connor told AFP, adding that broadcasts would resume as soon as the contract was signed.
Paris-based Eutelsat, Europe’s leading operator of satellite-based services, has put itself “at the service of Russian censorship”, said Pervyy Kavkazskiy on Sunday in a statement obtained by AFP in Paris.
The channel said Intersputnik had signed a contract to provide satellite television services for Gazprom Media, a subsidiary of the Russian gas giant that is closely controlled by the Kremlin.
“After it signed a major contract with Russian satellite company Intersputnik on 15 January, Eutelsat decided to stop broadcasting Pervyy Kavkazskiy, a Russian-language Caucasus channel,” the statement added.
The Eutelsat spokeswoman said that Intersputnik had been one of the operator’s clients for several years and the recently announced agreement merely prolonged existing arrangements.
[Passage omitted: Broadcast details for Pervyy Kavkazskiy; tension between Russia and Georgia recalled; Chechen leader's widow on staff]
(Source: AFP news agency, Paris, in French 1416 gmt 1 Feb 10 via BBC Monitoring)
Despite the above report Levan Gakheladze, chairman of Georgian Public Broadcasting’s (GPB) board of trustees, said this evening that Eutelsat has refused to host the First Caucasian Channel. Mr Gakheladze blamed “Russia’s pressure” for the operator’s refusal to sign a contract with GPB. “Talks have ended without result,” he told Civil.Ge by phone. “We plan to sue the company in the Paris court.”
Gia Chanturia, GPB general-director, who was holding negotiations with Eutelsat in Paris, said the operator failed “to give any logical explanation of its decision.” Quoting Vanessa O’Connor in the above AFP report, Gia Chanturia, said that the operator offered new conditions in the contract, which were “totally unacceptable for us.”
Mr Gakheladze said that GPB would launch talks with three other satellite operators on hosting of the First Caucasian, but declined to specify the companies. Currently the channel continues broadcasting through Internet and in Georgia it goes out on cable.
(Source: Civil Georgia)
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