Kilroy steps up fight with BBC for failing to stand by him

LONDON - Robert Kilroy-Silk has stepped up his fight to get the BBC to restore his talk show, suspended on Friday after his anti-Arab article, and the presenter has criticised the corporation for failing to stand by him.

Kilroy-Silk, who hosts the BBC One morning talk show 'Kilroy', has said the BBC is "wobbling and being wimpish" for pulling his show after a police investigation was launched into remarks he made about Arabs.

He accused the corporation of caving into pressure from a lobby demanding his resignation.

The calls to sack the presenter, who is also a former Labour MP, came from Labour MP Lynne Jones. Jones has tabled a Commons motion condemning his "racist comments" and "abhorrent contention".

The BBC said on Friday it would suspend the show while it investigates the situation. In place of 'Kilroy', the BBC is broadcasting an extended half-hour of 'BBC Breakfast' from 9.00-9.30am.

At the weekend Kilroy moved to defend his comments, written in a column in the Sunday Express, which branded Arab states "barbarous" and accused them of making little contribution to the world other than exporting oil and terrorism.

He went on to brand Arabs as "suicide bombers, limb amputators and women repressors".

In an interview with ITV's Sir Trevor McDonald, due to be broadcast tonight, he has said he has been overwhelmed with messages of support from the public.

"If they understand that I was actually telling the truth, that there are Arab regimes that are evil, tyrannical and dictatorial and that is the truth, are we not allowed to say that?" he tells Sir Trevor.

However, Kilroy-Silk said he wanted to make it clear he was not referring to Arab people in general but to some Middle East states.

Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, claimed that Kilroy-Silk was defending the indefensible. "If we allow it, most Muslims both here and abroad will think everything the extremists say about the British, that they are against Arabs, is true because they allow this kind of thing to be said about us," Philips told Sky News.

The article, headlined "We owe the Arabs nothing", had originally been published in April and gone unnoticed, but was published again after a secretary mistakenly sent the column to the Sunday Express to run again instead of a new one.

The publication of the column a second time round comes after the BBC has said its staff can no longer write controversial articles for newspapers. It also comes as the Hutton Report, which is expected to criticise the BBC, is prepared for publication.

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