The figures were compiled during several recent trips to the country occupied since March 2003 by US-led forces, The Independent newspaper's Beirut-based correspondent told a news conference in Madrid where he was promoting his book "The Great War for Civilisation".

The casualty rate meant up to 48,000 Iraqis a year were dying in the conflict, "the figure of 30,000 plus is ridiculous", Fisk said, adding that the West did not care about Iraqi deaths.

Bush quoted the figure in the lead-up to Iraq's general election in December. The White House later made clear it was not an official government estimate but was based on media reports.

The Americans were trapped and the only way out was to talk directly to the insurgents, mostly former Iraqi soldiers who had nothing to do with Al-Qaeda, said the Arabic-speaking journalist, who has specialised in Middle Eastern affairs for more than two decades.

One of the few reporters to interview Osama bin Laden, Fisk said Al-Qaeda's creator was initially supported by Washington in the same way that Saddam Hussein was once backed by the Americans.

"Most of the people we hate we actually created," he said.

The weapons had been part of Saddam Hussein's arsenal, much of which was looted after the invasion. But until now, insurgents had never successfully used them against an American aircraft.

"It could be just a lucky shot," said Gen. John Keane, the Army's acting chief of staff. "Or it could be that they have invested in a training program, and they now have some qualified operators and that'll be more of a threat than it has been in the past."

Apache helicopters are designed to be able to survive attacks by missiles like the SA-7, but the military is investigating why the chopper targeted in Monday's attack did not.

Insurgents Designing Aerial IEDs

There are also indications insurgents are developing what one Army general calls aerial IEDs — sophisticated bombs designed to leap in the air and detonate when a helicopter passes by.

Insurgents are believed to be making these devices from remnants of Saddam Hussein's anti-aircraft weapons.

"An aerial IED would be another indication of the enemy's innovation and creativity," said Keane. "Clearly they recognize that the publicity that surrounds a destroyed or damaged aircraft is significantly greater than the publicity that surrounds a destroyed or damaged vehicle."

The blasts occurred as the mother of abducted American reporter Jill Carroll appealed for her daughter's release after her captors threatened to kill her if U.S. authorities don't release all Iraqi women in military custody.

An Iraqi official confirmed the government had asked the Americans to free six of the eight Iraqi females in military custody but not as part of a bid to free Carroll, seized in Baghdad on Jan. 7.

The status of prisoners held by coalition forces is reviewed twice a week by a committee made up of the justice, human rights and interior ministries, and a representative of the US-led coalition.

The justice ministry spokesman said it was this committee which had studied the cases of the six women and found insufficient evidence against them.

However, the US military stressed that decisions over such matters were a detailed process that were unrelated to any other operational activity.

The demand that all Iraqi female prisoners held by coalition forces should be released was made in a video of Ms Carroll which aired on Arab TV channel al-Jazeera on Tuesday.

Her captors said the 28-year-old journalist would be killed within 72 hours if their demand was not met.

The video showed Ms Carroll apparently speaking to the camera, but did not include her voice.

Al-Jazeera did not say where it got the tape. The station itself has called for her release.

It was the first sighting of Ms Carroll since gunmen abducted her in Baghdad 10 days earlier, fatally wounding her translator during the attack.

Past demands

She is the 31st foreign journalist kidnapped in Iraq since the invasion almost three years ago, according to Reporters Sans Frontieres.

Ms Carroll has been a freelance reporter for the Christian Science Monitor newspaper, among others.

She had been reporting from the Middle East for Jordanian, Italian and other media organisations for the past three years, the Christian Science Monitor said in a statement.

The Monitor describes itself as a non-religious newspaper.

It is not the first time that the abductors of Western hostages in Iraq have called for the release of women prisoners.

In October 2004, Briton Ken Bigley and two American hostages were beheaded by members of al-Qaeda in Iraq, who had demanded female prisoners be freed.

At the time the Bush administration said that only two women were being held in Iraq - Huda Salih Mahdi Ammash, nicknamed by the US "Mrs Anthrax" and Rihab Taha, also known as "Dr Germ".

The pair were amongst a group of eight senior aides to former Iraqi President Saddam Hussein who were released in December 2005.

In November 2004, British aid worker Margaret Hassan was abducted and murdered in Iraq. Before her death she appeared in a similar hostage video calling for foreign troop withdrawals and the release of women prisoners.

The defence minister made the announcement to parliament's defence committee, less than three months before Italians go to the polls in a general election in which withdrawal is likely to be a major issue.

Italy's current contingent of 2,900 is the fourth-largest of the foreign coalition in Iraq, after the United States, Britain and South Korea.

Martino said however that Italian soldiers may be present on Iraqi soil after this year, but only as protection for a civilian mission.

"We are capable of assuming the responsibility and management of a possible reconstruction team in Dhi Qar province," he added, referring to a commitment that he described as "mainly civilian, but which would not exclude a military presence, very different from the current one, to assure the safety of civilian staff."

Martino had already told the Italian entertainment weekly Diva e Donna, published Wednesday, that Rome planned to halve its troop deployment by May.

"Last August we had 3,200 soldiers there, in September there were 2,900 and I expect that by May the contingent will be halved," the minister said.

The phased withdrawal continues apace this month with the repatriation of a further 300 troops.

"Another 1,000 soldiers will be brought home between now and June 2006," Martino told parliament, with 1,600 still in the country at that date.

Twenty-five Italian soldiers have been killed in Iraq since Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi defied popular street protests to send a 3,000-strong contingent to Iraq in June 2003.

Most died in a suicide attack on their headquarters in the southern town of Nasiriyah that November.

Martino's announcement to the parliamentary committee will go some way to defusing a potentially embarrassing election issue for Berlusconi, who is seeking re-election in the April 9 polls.

Opposition leader Romano Prodi, an outspoken critic of the deployment, went on record last year as saying he would order the immediate withdrawal of the contingent if elected, saying they are seen as an occupying force.

U.S. gunfire killed Nicola Calipari near the checkpoint on March 4, as the agent was heading to Baghdad airport in a car with an Italian journalist who had just been released after being held hostage by militants.

The ANSA and Apcom news agencies reported Tuesday that prosecutors planned to charge the soldier with murdering Calipari and attempting to murder the agent driving the car as well as the journalist, Giuliana Sgrena, who were both wounded during the incident. State TV news Tg1, and private SKY TG 24 television news also carried the report.

The prosecutor in charge of the case, Franco Ionta, could not be reached for comment Tuesday evening. A Pentagon spokesman, Lt. Col. Barry Venable, said the Pentagon had not seen any charges actually filed and declined to comment.

An Italian government report in May blamed U.S. military authorities for failing to signal there was a military checkpoint ahead on the road. It also contended that stress, inexperience and fatigue played a role in the shooting.

The Americans insisted that the car was going fast enough to alarm the soldiers. The Italians have said the vehicle was traveling slowly.

Police and ballistic experts assigned by Rome prosecutors to examine the car have concluded it was traveling slower than the U.S. military claimed. They agreed with U.S. findings that only one soldier fired at the car.

The shooting angered Italians, already largely opposed to the war in Iraq, and led many to step up calls for withdrawing the Italian contingent. Premier Silvio Berlusconi, who sent some 3,000 troops to Iraq after Saddam Hussein's ouster, insisted the incident would not affect troop levels or Italy's friendship with Washington.

Jarjoura told Lebanese satellite NEW TV channel in an interview overnight that some Lebanese figures, particularly Deputy and Minister Marwan Hamada, forced him, in return to some promises, to retell the fabricated story to the international probe and the Lebanese Attorney Said Mirza as well as Bahiya Hariri, sister of the slain Hariri.

He said he is a Syrian national of Lebanese mother, adding he went to Lebanon to work and before that he looked for a job in Egypt, Iraq and Oman. He went back to Lebanon 14 days before late Hariri was assassinated with a Lebanese passport where he stayed there for six months at his grandfather house.

The witness said the Lebanese military detained him at an army checkpoint six months after the expiry of his residence in Lebanon as written in the passport. After that, he was taken to prison where all his former inmates were released except him.

He added that three days later he was taken the Interrogation Department in Beirut where they told him he was working for the Syrian state security intelligence, and asked him if he had any information about the assassination of Hariri. He said he denied having any information on the issue, but despite that he was left to an assistant in the interrogation called Mohammad or Ahmad, to blackmail him.

Jarjoura said he was set free three days later, but a man called Wisam contacted him. This man turned out to be an intelligence agent and a bodyguard of Marwan Hamada as he took him to Hamada’s house.

He added that he was taken several times to Information and Interrogation security offices in Beirut, and finally he met Marwan Hamada in his house and was inspected by Wisam himself.

The witness said he told Hamada that he knew nothing and he wanted no money or anything else, but Hamada hit kicked and swore him badly and told his bodyguards to coerce him into assisting them to fabricate the story about the assassination of Hariri and implicate Syria.

He added that Hamada and others told him to go to Ms. Bahiya Hariri house and tell her that he had information about who killed late Hariri without saying that he met Hamada. They ordered him to tell Bahiya that he worked for the Syrian intelligence which trained him. “They made me memorize what I’m going to say to Bahiya…and tell her that Syrian General Hassan Khallouf and General Hassan Khalil had trained me to monitor figures in Lebanon, including the procession of Rafik Hariri.”

He said he told her what was ordered to state, and thought of escaping to report to his government but failed to do so as he was under constant monitoring by the Lebanese security.

Jarjoura said they forced to add other names to the alleged list he was monitoring, including Sa’ad al-hariri, Walid Jumblatt, Marwan Hamada, Jebran Tueni, Samir Qassir, Layla Muawad, Elias Atallah, Fares Said, Boutross Harb and Samir franjieh. They also asked him to say that Syrian Gen. Hassan Khalil and Gen. Hassan Khallouf gave him these names by means of Brigadier Gen. Suheil Barakat of Palestine security branch.

He added that last time he gave his registered testimony before the investigation committee was in the presence of a Lebanese woman translator, saying they showed him the photo of President Bashar al-Assad, the Prime Minister and Finance Minister. Later they showed him the photo of Gen. Assef Shawkat and the four other detainees in Montverde but he didn’t recognize them.

Jarjoura said he was sadly forced into a perjury by swearing the Bible for the first time in his life, adding he is repentant to do so.

He pointed out that “ I have more important things than his current testimony and would only disclose them to my government in Syria ….I will not sell my country off ….I received no money from anybody…and I was not sentenced in Lebanon…and all the false information came from Marwan hamada.”

The witness said he sought several times to escape but couldn’t.

Gbagbo issued a statement after meeting Nigerian President Olusegun Obasanjo in an effort to restore peace.

UN peacekeepers in Abidjan are under siege by government supporters who have tried to force their way into the UN headquarters in the capital.

More than 2,000 protesters tried to break into the building on Wednesday and had to be held back by warning shots and tear gas.

More than 300 troops have also been forced to withdraw from two UN bases in the west of the country after clashes over the past three days that have left at least four protesters dead.

"A number of attackers were killed and others wounded," UN spokesman Stephane Dujarric told reporters in New York. "UN forces are exercising maximum restraint in dealing with these attacks. Non-lethal methods are being used to disburse crowds and deter attacks."

Dujarric says the unrest is being incited by "hate media" broadcasting messages aimed at stirring trouble in the West African country, and they are "unacceptable and must cease immediately."

The UN Security Council is expressing "great concern" at the unrest and is expected to meet on Thursday to consider sanctions against the country.

Ivory Coast, the world's largest cocoa producer, has been sharply divided since a failed coup attempt in 2002.

"The leaders of states who would use terrorist means against us, as well as those who would consider using in one way or another weapons of mass destruction, must understand that they would lay themselves open to a firm and adapted response on our part," Chirac said during a visit to northwestern France, where France's nuclear submarines are based.

"This response could be a conventional one. It could also be of a different kind."

Chirac said all of France's nuclear forces had been configured with this strategy in mind and the number of nuclear warheads on French nuclear submarines had been reduced to allow targeted strikes.

It was the first time he had so clearly linked the threat of a nuclear response to a terrorist attack, but he made no mention of any specific threat against France.

"Against a regional power, our choice would not be between inaction or annihilation," he said.

"The flexibility and reactivity of our strategic forces would enable us to exercise our response directly against its centers of power and its capacity to act."

Canadian border guards called RCMP after finding a 9-mm handgun, two shotguns and a rifle in the car at about 9:30 PT.

When they looked under the hood, they found what they believed was a bomb - a tubular package with wires sticking out of it - in the engine compartment.

"The driver was interviewed by border services officers, who were suspicious," said Paula Shore, a spokeswoman for Canada Border Services Agency.

"Our border services officers are trained to look for inconsistencies. It's never just one thing that makes them want to take another look at someone."

The RCMP explosives squad determined, however, that the suspicious package was not an explosive.

Surrey RCMP and the Washington State Patrol near Blaine, Wash., diverted traffic for more than two hours from the Peace Arch border, the busiest crossing west of Detroit.

The vehicle's driver was taken into custody for questioning but no charges were laid. He is believed to be a U.S. citizen. His parents live in Oregon.