The British Broadcast Corporation plans to launch an Arab-language TV station in the Middle East in an effort to compete with Qatar-based satellite station Al-Jazeera, according to a BBC report on Thursday.

The proposed BBC Television channel to be funded by the British Foreign Office is designed to offer news and discussion programs 24 hours a day across the Middle East and it will also be available to Arabic speakers in the UK and Europe.

"After discussions about the changing media scene in the Middle East, and in the light of the growing impact of regional satellite TV services in Arabic, the Foreign Commonwealth Office asked the BBC World Service to develop a proposition for a BBC Arabic television service," said a spokeswoman of the BBC World Service which is also funded by the Foreign Office.

"If it is given the go-ahead, it could potentially offer an alternative to satellite stations such as Al-Jazeera," a BBC report said. Al-Jazeera, which was launched in Qatar in 1996, grew in popularity and international recognition during wars in Afghanistan and Iraq in recent years.

The BBC TV channel, which is still in its planning stage, will be broadcast from London but will have staff based across the Middle East, with a reported annual cost of 28 million pounds (50 million US dollars).

BBC World Service is the largest international radio news broadcaster in Iraq with its FM broadcasts in Baghdad, Basra and other major cities reporting a weekly audience of 1.8 million, BBC said.

In February, the US government funded a satellite channel called al-Hurra, meaning The Free One, broadcasting from Washington to the Arab world.