By ANNA JOHNSON
The Associated Press
Saturday, October 28, 2006; 6:29 AM

BEIRUT, Lebanon -- Alberto Fernandez is one of the most recognized U.S. officials in the Middle East thanks to his frequent appearances on Arab satellite stations and his candid approach to selling America's side of the story. But the Cuban-born fluent Arabic speaker was barely known in the United States until recent remarks he made calling Washington's Iraq policies arrogant and stupid.

His comments infuriated some Bush administration officials and their supporters, and vividly illustrated the pitfalls of America's battle for Mideast "hearts and minds," which has U.S. representatives speaking to one audience and answering to a very different one.

Critics have accused Fernandez of not standing up for America in his comments aired last weekend by Al-Jazeera television, in which he said Washington had displayed "arrogance" and "stupidity" in Iraq.

Fernandez issued a written apology the day after the Oct. 21 broadcast, saying he "seriously misspoke." State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said Fernandez was still on the job and the matter was closed.

Conservative commentator Michelle Malkin wrote that if Fernandez represents the voice of the U.S. in the Mideast, "we need to withdraw all State Department bureaucrats from the region, find out what else Fernandez and his Arabic-speaking colleagues have been telling the Arab media, and boot them off the airwaves. Permanently."

A panel commissioned by the administration said three years ago that the U.S. government should do more to counter growing Arab antagonism, in part by putting forward officials with the skills to speak to Arabs in their own language.

Until the controversy, Fernandez's chatty, freewheeling style gave him an audience far bigger than official spokesmen or Cabinet members, whose remarks required voice-over translations, could command.

Many observers said Fernandez's style of informal debate lent itself to controversy, but also spoke to young, disenchanted Arabs angry over the Iraq war and U.S. response to last summer's Israel-Hezbollah war.

"I think he's quite popular with viewers ... under the present condition in relations between the U.S. and the Arab world, to have an American who appears on their screens and talks to them in their language, it's quite a phenomenon," said Abderrahim Foukara, Al-Jazeera's Washington bureau chief.

Even before the latest furor, Fernandez, the State Department's director of public diplomacy for Near Eastern Affairs, had run afoul of conservatives for his on-the-air comments.

In February, former U.S. federal prosecutor Andrew C. McCarthy accused Fernandez in a National Review Online article of "gushing" over the hardline Egyptian cleric Sheik Youssef al-Qaradawi during comments last year on Islamonline.net.

Fernandez referred to the cleric _ who is banned from visiting the U.S. for alleged extremist activities _ as a respected religious leader.

Danielle Pletka of the conservative American Enterprise Institute said Fernandez' comments about Iraq were "wholly inappropriate" and point to a larger discord between the State Department and the White House on Mideast policy.

"Everyone says something dopey once and while, but the problem is statements like that are a reflection of a broader disease within our Foreign Service that the mission isn't shared, notwithstanding who might be president," Pletka said.

But supporters say Fernandez is a breath of fresh air not only because he speaks Arabic but because he appears comfortable talking to Arabs about unpopular U.S. policies.

"Sending out spokesmen to be wooden doesn't make them persuasive," said Jon Alterman of the Center for Strategic and International Studies. "If you are going to say that people have to maintain a veneer of infallibility then you might as well not even try."

Lawrence Pintak, director of the Adham Center for Electronic Journalism at the American University in Cairo, said Fernandez "is willing to joke and argue with people. He doesn't spout a couple of sound bites and shut down. He has earned respect here."

Fernandez' relaxed approach also makes him more convincing than a stiff speech, said Marc Lynch, an associate professor at Williams College in Massachusetts and author of the book "Voices of the New Arab Public: Iraq, Al Jazeera and Middle East Politics Today."

"Fernandez has adopted a more freewheeling kind of style and gets into the mix and is more persuasive," he said.

The furor over Fernandez's comments comes at a crucial moment in U.S. public diplomacy. Last month, Undersecretary of State Karen Hughes said it could take decades to change anti-American feelings around the globe, calling the three-year-old Iraq war "the latest excuse" for anti-American grievance among Muslims.

A June poll by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press found that America's image in 15 nations dropped sharply this year, and less than one-third of the people in Egypt, Jordan, Pakistan and Turkey had a favorable view of the U.S.

Lynch said he fears the backlash over Fernandez' comments could have a chilling effect on other Arabic speakers who may want to work in U.S. public diplomacy.

"If it means someone's career, why take the chance?" he said. "If you have to constantly look over your shoulder, you won't be very effective."