Prague, Czech Republic ? They had planned to make history last week by having President Bush deliver a major NATO address at Radio Free Europe, a shining symbol of democracy. But the speech had to be relocated because RFE’s headquarters now is constantly under threat by terrorists, a reminder that freedom of speech still is in jeopardy in many parts of the world.

RFE is a target because it now is trying to get the truth into Muslim countries instead of communist countries.

After World War II, Radio Free Europe became synonymous with the Cold War. It beamed the news and values of the democratic world into countries controlled by the hammer-and-sickle gang. RFE later merged with Radio Liberty, which rammed information through the Russians’ jamming to people who had been fed the party line.

Playwright Vaclav Havel listened to Radio Free Europe while imprisoned for protesting the repressive regime in Czechoslovakia. The broadcasts were his lifeline. So not surprisingly, when Radio Free Europe fell on hard times after the Soviet Union cracked apart, it was Havel who came to the rescue.

In the early 1990s, Congress was about to silence the broadcast service. It no longer seemed necessary. The cost of keeping 1,800 employees in Munich was high. Enter Havel, who by then had become the first democratically elected president of the new Czech Republic. He offered to provide space for RFE-RL in Prague for $1 a month. President Bill Clinton took him up on it.

So on July 4, 1995, the radio service started broadcasting from Prague with a bare-bones staff of 400. And with grand irony, it was housed in the former Communist Federal Parliament Building.

Today, RFE also has gotten a new lease on life. The target audiences now are largely in the Middle East. The mission of providing factual news hasn’t changed, but the geography and method have. RFE now provides a roundup of Middle East-related news on the Internet as well as broadcasts to Iraq, Afghanistan and Iran. Broadcasts in Kurdish, a lifeline to those often-suppressed people, will begin in 2003.

RFE employees say the most common question they get is: “Radio Free Europe? I thought Europe was free.” Right. Today, the name just identifies where the home office is. The broadcasts are going where the greater need is. And people are listening. When RFE partnered with an FM frequency in Afghanistan, 65 percent of the country’s listeners began tuning in. The RFE-RL Web site ” www.rferl.org ” gets hundreds of hits every day from government offices in Baghdad, an indication that people who work for Saddam Hussein are sneaking a peek.

Not surprisingly, al-Qaida has declared Radio Free Europe a primary target. As a result, the picturesque old buildings of the Prague headquarters ” which survived the Nazis and the Russians ” now are surrounded by tanks and guards with machine guns. The new leaders in Prague have become worried about the possibility of a terrorist attack in the heart of their ancient and beautiful city. And officials privately have suggested that RFE-RL look for a new home more on the outskirts of town.

In another example of the changing times, RFE stopped its broadcasts to the Czech Republic in September. They no longer were needed in the free-market, pro-Western country. Few in the United States even noticed. Americans were focused on the first anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks.

But that is exactly why RFE-RL should be given the budget and tools to deal with the aftermath of Sept. 11. We need to get our side of the story out to people who get most of their news from anti-U.S. stations and newspapers ” to the huge generation of Muslims under 25.

The United States now is getting with the program and trying things like Radio Sawa, which is mostly American music with 10 minutes of news ” all the better to draw in young listeners.

Congress must give RFE-RL what it needs to do its job better. Sending by shortwave is for yesterday’s audiences. RFE-RL needs to get back a medium-wave frequency for Radio Free Iraq in order to tell the other side of the weapons-inspections story. Resources also are needed to partner with more FM frequencies.

The truth is that our wobbly world needs a strong broadcast service to the Middle East. It is like the scene at the end of Alfred Hitchcock’s movie “Foreign Correspondent.” When the lights go out in the radio studio during the blitz air attack on London, Joel McCrea pleads into the microphone, “Hello, America! Hang onto your lights! They’re the only lights left in the world.”

Only now, it seems that way more than ever.