WASHINGTON, Dec 18: The White House was scrambling Wednesday to defuse charges of heavy-handed meddling with the Voice of America (VOA) following high-level efforts to prevent it from airing an interview with Chinese dissident Wei Jingshen. The Wall Street Journal reported on Wednesday that the US ambassador to China, James Sasser, called the White House December 9 out of concern that a planned VOA interview with the newly exiled dissident would damage Washington's rapprochement with Beijing.

Sasser said that the interview with Wei, who spent 18 years in prison, would damage US efforts to win the release of other dissidents and that broadcasting his interview on VOA would violate tacit assurances that Washington wouldn't seek to exploit his release politically.

VOA aired the interview despite protests from senior US officials, though the administration did block a segment of the interview from broadcast by another government-owned broadcasting outfit, Worldnet Television.

VOA, technically a government-funded but independent agency, has recently shared some Worldnet equipment and personnel, as it did in the case of Wei's interview, the newspaper said.

White House officials believed airing the entire Wei interview on Worldnet was particularly dicey because they believe it speaks more directly for the US government, in contrast with VOA, the Journal said.

White House spokesman Michael McCurry said on Wednesday that National Security Adviser Sandy Berger had called VOA director Evelyn Lieberman to ``alert (her) to foreign-policy implications of, you know, programs they might be considering.''

``But ... anyone who knows Evelyn Lieberman and doubts that she is independent, You do not her as well as we know her," McCurry said. "And we would not make any effort to violate what is a very important Principle, the editorial independence of the Voice of America.''

``At the same time, it is perfectly appropriate for the Voice of America to understand what the consequences of some of its broadcasts might be from our perspective looking at the foreign policy issues,'' McCurry said.

He added that the purpose of the phone call was simply ``to give her information so that she can make the independent editorial judgment that she alone makes.''

Copyright © 1997 Indian Express Newspapers (Bombay) Ltd.