South America set for Al Jazeera-style Chavez-backed TV

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BUENOS AIRES -- A Venezuelan-backed TV network modeled after Al Jazeera is set to begin broadcasts throughout South America.

Critics fear it could become a pulpit for Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez.

Telesur, short for "Television of the South," is billed as a commercial-free, hemispherewide counterbalance to North American media. It is slated to begin broadcasts within a few weeks.

"Soon we will have Telesur, a channel with information for South American countries, because is not possible that Venezuela and the other southern countries depend only on information from CNN," Mr. Chavez said during a March press conference in Paris, according to a report on a Venezuelan government Web site.

Mr. Chavez has aggressively promoted the network in recent months and landed varying degrees of support from left-leaning governments in Argentina, Uruguay and Brazil, as well as Cuba.

Telesur's arrival comes amid claims by a ranking Venezuelan official that Al Jazeera is expanding its news coverage from Latin America and planning to establish a regional bureau in Caracas.

Like Al Jazeera, which receives state funding from Qatar's oil revenues, Telesur will rely in large part on government largess from Venezuela, a major global oil supplier.

Al Jazeera "has determined that Venezuela is a strategic place that is going to permit it to cover to all the region," said Andres Izarra, Venezuela's minister of communication and information.

The government document describes Al Jazeera's expansion as being "framed in the Al Jazeera-Telesur project."

"It is my understanding is that there is an agreement to extend office space, and that Caracas will serve as the central hub for Al Jazeera's South American coverage," said Nikolas Kozloff, an analyst for the Washington-based Council on Hemispheric Affairs (COHA).