The debut of Al-Jazeera’s new English-language channel has been delayed once again, as critics pound the network with allegations that it has ties to terrorists and insurgents in Iraq.

A former ABC News correspondent slated to be the on-air face of Al-Jazeera International’s American operation, David Marash, said in an interview that the delay was due to continuing technical problems outfitting and connecting the new network’s broadcast centers in Washington; London; Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, and Doha, Qatar.

“They’re still completing the physical structure, the newsrooms, the studios, and all of the fiber-optic wire links between them, and it’s taking a them a lot longer than advertised,” Mr. Marash said. He said some of the troubles stem from the cutting-edge, high-definition video equipment being deployed by the new network, part of a satellite television empire owned by the emir of Qatar, Sheik Hamad Khalifa al-Thani.

“It is state of the art,” Mr. Marash said. “This is like an A-series F-14 fighter. The black boxes blink out every 15 minutes.”

Mr. Marash said no new date has been set for the rollout of the network, which was set at one point for April, and then for sometime this month. Now the launch is expected no earlier than September. The anchor said the delay had no relation to the ongoing difficulties Al-Jazeera International is having convincing cable television operators to give the fledgling network a berth on their systems. To dodge the roadblock, the network is considering streaming its signal for free over the Internet.

Part of the difficulty could be due to a campaign conservative activists are mounting to highlight alleged connections between terrorists and the Arabic-language Al-Jazeera, which is famous for airing messages from Al Qaeda leaders and sometimes gets exclusive video footage of insurgent attacks on American forces in Iraq.

“They’re claiming it’s all technical problems, but I’ve got to believe they’re running into quite a bit of resistance from cable operators and satellite providers. I think that’s because they’re understanding the history and sponsorship of this operation,” a prominent critic of the yet-to-debut network, Cliff Kincaid, said. “We are continuing to monitor this and make sure nobody jumps at the bait.”

Mr. Kincaid, who works for a conservative press watchdog group, Accuracy in Media, has prepared a 20-minute documentary making the case that Al-Jazeera inspires terrorists and, in some cases, has been infiltrated by them. The video contains clips of captured insurgents in Iraq saying they were drawn to the fight by material they saw on Al-Jazeera. Mr. Kincaid’s video also describes the cases of suspect Al-Jazeera employees. A former managing director of the network, Mohammed Jacem al-Ali, was caught on camera pledging his company’s allegiance to Saddam Hussein. “Al-Jazeera is your channel,” Mr. Ali told the Iraqi leader’s son, Uday.

Last year, the network’s former Afghanistan bureau chief, Taysir Alluni, was sentenced to seven years in prison for carrying funds for Al Qaeda. In addition, Mr. Kincaid’s video notes, a cameraman working for Al-Jazeera in Afghanistan, Sami al-Hajj, was detained by the American military and transferred to the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

In an interview yesterday, Mr. Kincaid acknowledged that American networks have aired many of the same messages obtained by Al-Jazeera, and that photographers for American news organizations have been detained by the American military on suspicion of terrorist ties. However, he insisted that the connections between the Arab network and terrorism are stronger and more pervasive. “Al-Jazeera clearly has been the worst. I don’t think there’s any way around the fact that it has developed and has an ongoing, working relationship with Al Qaeda. That makes it different,” he said.

Mr. Marash told The New York Sun last week that he has not seen Mr. Kincaid’s film, but accepts that some of the assertions in it are true. “There is some factual basis to some of the charges in the movie,” Mr. Marash said. “There was a fairly high executive who was revealed on evidenced developed in Baghdad after the fall that he had an unhealthy relationship with Saddam and Uday. They fired him the next day.”

Mr. Marash also conceded that the network may have played a role in the decisions of some in the Arab world to attack Americans. “Undoubtedly, some Al-Jazeera programs may have inspired some social misfits to undertake terrorism,” he said. “The danger with information is that some people will take it the wrong way.”

However, the veteran television journalist said the extrapolation that the network is a tool of terrorists is unwarranted. “The film attempts to derive the idea that Al-Jazeera attempts to stir up anti-Americanism and terrorism. All I can tell you is the more I know about the company’s aims and the aims of the people who are running it, the more completely ludicrous that is,” Mr. Marash said. “There’s probably no more American-style company in the Middle East than Al-Jazeera.”

Mr. Kincaid does not accept that notion. He said the company paid for Alluni’s legal defense and continues to argue on the network’s Web site that he was innocent of the charges.

The nascent network has signed up a slew of high-profile television personalities, including a longtime BBC inter viewer, David Frost, and a former CNN International host, Riz Khan. The hiring spree has led Mr. Kincaid to contend that some of the Al-Jazeera International talent have had their judgment clouded by a torrent of “petrodollars.”

However, the Arab network’s staffing successes seem as much a function of belt-tightening at established networks as the largesse of Al-Jazeera’s owners.

Mr. Marash said he took a pay cut when he left ABC’s “Nightline,” which was cutting staff. Another ABC journalist who signed up with Al-Jazeera, Richard Gizbert, is making about $103,000 a year, approximately the same sum he made as a part-time reporter for ABC, according to British labor tribunal testimony reported last week by the Guardian. Mr. Gizbert has been tapped to host, from London, Al-Jazeera International’s weekly roundup of the electronic press.

Mr. Marash, who said he was to embark yesterday on a reporting trip to Mexico, said the new English-language network has received positive treatment from rank-and-file officials in the American government. However, a former “Nightline” executive producer who sharply attacked Al-Jazeera in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece last year, Dorrance Smith, recently took over the Defense Department’s public affairs operation and still seems to be no fan of the network.

“I have to say that the uninformed and biased attitudes that were evidenced in Dorrance’s piece in the Wall Street Journal is still evidenced in his response to requests from Al-Jazeera International to meet and talk to him about who we are and what we’re going to do,” Mr. Marash said earlier this year.

Mr. Smith did not return a call seeking comment for this article, but Mr. Marash noted that other officials, such as the undersecretary of state for public affairs and public diplomacy, Karen Hughes, have engaged in a dialogue with Al-Jazeera. “We’ll take our cue from Madam Ambassador Hughes,” the anchor said.