Washington – One of the World’s Richest Launching Venture To Rival Al Jazeera

Washington – One of the world’s richest men says he is setting up an international news network to rival Al-Jazeera.

Alexander Machkevitch, a Kazakh-Israeli mining mogul, says he and unnamed partners are in the early stages of developing the venture. Machkevitch is pitching the idea at an annual meeting of Jewish leaders in Washington Wednesday.

He told The Associated Press that he had not yet decided what the for-profit venture would be called or where it would be based. However he ruled out Kazakhstan.

Machkevitch said that he has had a longtime interest in creating media that will be less divisive than some of what is offered. He is motivated in part by his view that Israel is not given fair coverage in much of the international media.

Although he hopes to rival Al-Jazeera’s reach in the Middle East, he went out of his way to praise the the pan-Arab television news network based in Qatar.He said that he is considering a multi-language and multimedia format that could include Arabic and Farsi programming.

He said that his biography as a Jew, who grew up and succeeded among Muslims, has motivated him to look for ways to bridge the divide.

Machkevitch said that he wants a network with editorial direction independent of any government or special interest.

He said that his interests in Kazakhstan would not influence the coverage of the network he hopes to create. The country’s President Nursultan Nazarbayev overwhelmingly won re-election this week in a vote sharply criticized Monday by international monitors. Kazakh election officials said that Nazerbayev won 95 per cent of the vote.

But Machkevitch said that the vote reflected the will of the people.

“The people fully support the president,” he said. “Kazakhstan is going in absolutely the right direction.”

Although Kazakhstan has frequently also been criticized by watchdogs for its record on media freedom, Machkevitch called the atmosphere for journalists “very good, very open.”

“Any journalist could write anything they want about anybody,” he said.

Machkevitch made his fortune as co-founder of Eurasian Natural Resources Corp., whose reach he has expanded around the world. In its most recent list of the world’s richest people, Forbes magazine ranks Machkevitch as 297 with an estimated fortune of $3.7 billion.