Heavy pressure from the US occupation authority in Iraq has forced a Bahraini firm to pull the plug on Baghdad's first brief experience with mobile phones, which were previously banned by Saddam Hussein, the firm said.
"They applied enough pressure for us to push the button," the firm's regional operations manager, Mr Rashid al-Snan, said yesterday.
"I feel really sorry - sorry for the Iraqis and sorry for the foreigners who were using the network."
A spokeswoman for the US-led Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) declined immediate comment on the closure of the GSM network operated by Bahrain's Batelco. The US-led authority in Iraq - which wants to hold a tender for three regional mobile phone licences - asked Batelco to shut down.
A renegade service provider could throw a spanner into its plans for a tender for the licences, among the most potentially lucrative contracts to be offered in Iraq. An Irish concern is interested in tendering for the contract. Iraq was frozen out of a global boom in personal portable phones by Saddam's secret state. But mobile phones sprang unexpectedly to life a week ago, delighting cellphone users who could make and receive calls around the world.
Within days, mobiles replaced pricey satellite telephones as a major means of communicating abroad - at least for foreign journalists and businessmen. Few Iraqis have suitable phones. Decrepit after years of international sanctions and badly disrupted by wartime bombing, landlines are not an option.
Mr Snan said he understood from the Americans they could confiscate the $5 million-worth of antennae and other equipment Batelco had put up across Baghdad - without compensation - unless it turned off the phones.
Mobile phones were banned to all but senior officials while Saddam was in power. Batelco, partly owned by the Bahraini government, said it planned to persist with its licence application at a tender conference in Amman, Jordan, later this week.
It hopes to invest $50 million in Iraq.