by David Bauder, AP

NEW YORK (March 31) - NBC fired journalist Peter Arnett on Monday, saying it was wrong for him to give an interview with state-run Iraqi TV in which he said the American-led coalition's initial plan for the war had failed because of Iraq's resistance. Arnett called the interview a ''misjudgment'' and apologized.

Arnett, on NBC's ''Today'' show on Monday, said he was sorry for his statement but added ''I said over the weekend what we all know about the war.''

''I want to apologize to the American people for clearly making a misjudgment,'' the New Zealand-born Arnett said. He said he would try to leave Baghdad now, joking ''there's a small island in the South Pacific that I've inhabited that I'll try to swim to.''

NBC defended him Sunday, saying he had given the interview as a professional courtesy and that his remarks were analytical in nature. But by Monday morning the network switched course and, after Arnett spoke with NBC News President Neal Shapiro, said it would no longer work with Arnett.

''It was wrong for Mr. Arnett to grant an interview to state-controlled Iraqi TV, especially at a time of war,'' NBC spokeswoman Allison Gollust said. ''And it was wrong for him to discuss his personal observations and opinions in that interview.''

Arnett, who won a Pulitzer Prize reporting in Vietnam for The Associated Press, gained much of his prominence from covering the 1991 Gulf War for CNN. One of the few American television reporters left in Baghdad, his reports were frequently aired on NBC and its cable sisters, MSNBC and CNBC.

Leaving a second network under a cloud may mark the end of his TV career. Arnett was the on-air reporter of the 1998 CNN report that accused American forces of using sarin nerve gas on a Laotian village in 1970 to kill U.S. defectors. Two CNN employees were sacked and Arnett was reprimanded over the report, which the station later retracted. Arnett left the network when his contract was not renewed.

In the Iraqi TV interview, broadcast Sunday by Iraq's satellite television station and monitored by The Associated Press in Egypt, Arnett said his Iraqi friends tell him there is a growing sense of nationalism and resistance to what the United States and Britain are doing.

He said the United States is reappraising the battlefield and delaying the war, maybe for a week, ''and rewriting the war plan. The first war plan has failed because of Iraqi resistance. Now they are trying to write another war plan.''

''Clearly, the American war plans misjudged the determination of the Iraqi forces,'' Arnett said.

Arnett said it is clear that within the United States there is growing opposition to the war and a growing challenge to President Bush about the war's conduct.

''Our reports about civilian casualties here, about the resistance of the Iraqi forces, are going back to the United States,'' he said. ''It helps those who oppose the war when you challenge the policy to develop their arguments.''

At a briefing Sunday in Qatar, Gen. Tommy Franks ticked off major achievements of the war campaign, including the advance of troops to within 60 miles of Baghdad. But he found himself answering questions about whether he had enough troops to do the job and denying that coalition forces were stalled.

A Republican congresswoman, Ileana Ros-Lehtinen, told Fox News Channel on Sunday that Arnett's remarks were ''Kafkaesque'' and ''just crazy.''

''Let's hope that he's being coerced,'' Ros-Lehtinen said. [This Congress creature is a vehement opponent of the Cuban revolution. Therefore, her comments are reality based and reasonable. -ed.]