BAGHDAD - Iraq's US-installed interim Governing Council Monday banned Dubai-based satellite television Al-Arabiya from working in Iraq for incitement to murder after it broadcast a Saddam Hussein tape calling for attacks on council members.

"We have decided to ban Al-Arabiya in Iraq for a certain period of time because it broadcast an invitation to murder, an incitement to murder by the voice of Saddam Hussein," said the council's current chairman Jalal Talabani.

He said council members would also pursue a separate suit against the Arabic-language station through the Iraqi courts, the first here against a news organization since Saddam's overthrow.

Al-Arabiya announced shortly afterwards that its Baghdad bureau had been forcibly shut.

"Iraqi police entered the Al-Arabiya bureau armed with a decision from the interim Governing Council to close the bureau, seize the furniture and equipment until the channel gives a written commitment not to promote violence," the channel's Baghdad correspondent reported live.

Only after providing the assurance would the council "examine the question of reopening the bureau," said the correspondent.

"This is the first time that the media has been sued in the new Iraq," Talabani told a Baghdad briefing.

"Although the freedom of expression is guaranteed here, incitement to murder is forbidden in every country of the world," he said.

The offending tape was broadcast on November 16 by Al-Arabiya, which launched this year as a new competitor to Qatar-based Al-Jazeera television that has received a number of Saddam recordings since the US-led April invasion.

"Those who are installed by foreign armies ... are in the same situation as the occupiers, and we have to fight them even before we fight the foreign armies," said the voice on the tape, referring to the Governing Council.

"That is a legitimate duty, patriotic and humanitarian," the message added, in an address to the Iraqi people on the occasion of the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, that ended for Saddam's minority Sunni community here Monday.

The US-installed Governing Council issued September 23 strict rules for media reporting in Iraq and vowed to keep a close watch to make sure they do not incite violence or comfort supporters of Saddam Hussein.

The five rules were part of a statement announcing that the Al-Jazeera and Al-Arabiya had been banned from reporting on government activities for two weeks because of their "irresponsible actions" after an earlier message calling on Irqis to take up arms and attributed to Saddam.

The statement also ordered all citizens or foreigners to provide the authorities with any information they have regarding terrorist attacks or "any violent action that aims to breed disorder and fear."

While specifically targeting the two television stations, the statement made it clear that all media in the occupied country must respect the rules "in order to allow them to continue working in Iraq."

The statement, signed by the council's security chief Ayad Allawi, laid down orders for media:

- Do not incite violence against any person or group

- Do not incite disorder

- Do not incite violence against the authorities or people in a position of responsibility.

- Do not advocate the return of the Baath Party (headed by Saddam) or issue any statements that represents the Baath Party directly or indirectly.

- Do not incite sectarian violence or fighting between religious or racial groups.

The rules were criticised by international media watchdogs, but defended by the US-led coalition as a normal limitation on press freedom in a country dogged by insurgency, where relations between different ethnic and religious groups are also delicate after years of repression.

Ironically the US Central Intelligence Agency announced that its findings were "inconclusive" as to whether the voice on Al-Arabiya's latest tape was actually Saddam.

"The quality of the recording is poor and after an extensive CIA technical analysis, it's inconclusive as to whether or not it is the voice of Saddam Hussein," a CIA official said in Washington.

The audiotape was dismissed by President George W. Bush as "propaganda".