By Jim Fisher-Thompson (USIA staff writer).

Visiting the US recently, President Yahya Jammeh made himself available to the African Correspondents Association and ended up being grilled on his government's treatment of journalists back home. "I am here because I believe in press freedom," he said at a breakfast meeting with journalists which was co-sponsored by the Freedom Forum, one of America's largest media foundations.

Joan Mower, director of Freedom Forum asked the president about reports of government harassment of journalists in The Gambia. "It is not true that we jail journalists. We believe in the rule of law."

But Jammeh left himself open by admitting that any journalists detained in recent years were for state security reasons. The problem , he said, was that "journalists want to question people" for their stories, but "they don't want to be questioned" about their sources when writing articles that the authorities believe are unfair or false.

"I can assure you, the press is free [in The Gambia] as long as it is responsible," Jammeh added.

Having come to power through a coup, Jammeh's government is wary of criticism and quick to detain journalists who write articles critical of his regime.

Jammeh - who was born in 1965, the year his country won its independence from Britain - said: "We came to power to rescue our country from a one-party system. The country had had the same president for 30 years who neglected education and allowed corruption to run rampant. We came in with a plan for development. We built airports, schools and roads; and now Gambia is the only country in Africa whose workers have experienced increases in their salaries each year."

That deserved to go into the Guinness Book of Records, only that the president got his facts wrong. Yet he continued: "When we came [to power], we came in the daylight and believed in freedom," He recalled the time he studied in Alabama in 1993, and said: "I want to assure the United States that I have always been a friend of the US."