NBC has dumped Baghdad-based reporter Peter Arnett after he gave a controversial interview to Iraqi state television, it emerged today.

Arnett, officially in Iraq for National Geographic Explorer, reported for NBC and MSNBC on the state of affairs in the city. His reports were also seen on CNBC Europe when that channel provided MSNBC simulcasts.

In the interview, Arnett said: "America is reappraising the battlefield, delaying the war, maybe a week and rewriting the war plan. The first plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another plan," adding, "Our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States. It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments."

The bizarreness of the situation however is in the enormous about-turn NBC made over a twenty-four hour period. On Sunday, a spokeswoman for the network told the American press: "His remarks were analytical in nature and were not intended to be anything more. His outstanding reporting on the war speaks for itself."

Come Monday however, and the attitude could not have been more contrasting. NBC News President Neal Shapiro said in a statement: "It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state controlled Iraqi TV — especially at a time of war — and it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions in that interview."

"Therefore, Peter Arnett will no longer be reporting for NBC News and MSNBC."

Arnett went to the length of apologising for his statements on NBC's Today show on Monday morning, saying: "I want to apologise to the American people for clearly making a misjudgment." The New Zealand-born reporter joked: "There's a small island in the South Pacific I've inhabited that I'll try to swim to."

This isn't the first time Arnett has departed a television network under bad circumstances; in a now-infamous incident, he was the reporter for a 1998 CNN report accusing US forces of using sarin gas on a Laotian village in 1970 to kill US defectors - the network later retracted the report, sacking two staff and reprimanding Arnett, who later left the network when his contract was not renewed.

Rather ironically, Arnett had only recently made comments to TV Guide, for the April 5 edition, saying: "...the Iraqis have thrown the CNN crew out of Baghdad, and I'm still here. Any satisfaction in that? Ha, ha, ha, ha."

Whoops.