Israeli media reported that Mossad's annual budget was doubled last year largely due to increased concerns over the Iranian nuclear program.

In recent months, US, Arab and Israeli newspapers have been rife with speculation about the likelihood of an American or Israeli attack against Iran's nuclear sites. American and Israeli officials have denied those reports.

In December, Dagan, 60, predicted Iran would be able to manufacture a nuclear bomb within one to two years.

Israeli fears of Iran were heightened after Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad called for Israel to be wiped off the map last October.

Mossad answers to a parliamentary sub-committee made up of members of the defense and foreign affairs committees in the Israeli legislature.

On June 7, 1981, Israeli war planes destroyed the Iraqi nuclear plant at Osirak, close to Baghdad.

"He is not cooperating with us and is being loyal to his politics and not the law," said the governor in his statement which also suspended police chief Major General Hassan Sawadi.

Waili said the two security chiefs were suspected of links to "sabotage groups, from outside the city and abroad, that are carrying out sabotage and terrorist attacks".

"We have noticed that some border guards and some of the leadership in the army have doubtful links to wanted people," Waili said.

The governor also accused two prominent Shiite clerics of sharing the blame for a recent upsurge in violence in the city and warned of impending attacks against the city.

The crisis in Basra came amid renewed demands from the White House for a clampdown on the Shiite militias which stand accused of infiltrating the security forces for sectarian ends.

"Perhaps the main challenge is the militia that tend to take the law into their own hands," Bush said following a meeting with US former secretaries of state.

"It's going to be up to the government to step up and take care of that militia so that the Iraqi people are confident in the security of their country," he said, making it clear the US military should not be expected to get involved with the militia threat.

British General Robert Fry added in a teleconference from Baghdad on Friday that the key to resolving the militia issue lies in politics.

Fry said Maliki must first "engage the political constituencies, which are connected to the main militias, lay out quite clearly what his political objectives are, and invite those political leaders to enter the legitimate political process and not remain outside of it.

"Before any form of military action was to have been taken, you first of all need political and also public consultation," he said.

As talks continue over the formation of prime minister designate Nuri al-Maliki's new government, there is intense scrutiny over the candidate for the interior ministry -- a key institution in any attempt to confront the militias.

A number of names have been put forward for the job, including independent Shiite Qassem Dawoud and the current minister, Bayan Baqr Solagh.

Solagh, a member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq (SCIRI), one of the main Shiite parties, has been criticized for his ties to militias and his inability to rein in sectarian-related bloodshed.

A final government line-up is expected to be announced Monday, a day after parliament reconvenes.

The British-patrolled city was long considered more peaceful than the restive centre and west of Iraq, but growing infilitration of the security forces by Shiite militiamen has seen an upsurge in violence.

Two Sunni clerics and a Sunni politician have been murdered in the city in recent days.

Four British service personnel also died last week when their helicopter crashed. British troops who went to their assistance came under attack by an angry mob.

Violence elsewhere in Iraq raged on on Saturday, with at least nine dead in insurgent attacks, five of them in the main northern city of Mosul.

Authorities also recovered six bodies around the country.

In northern Iraq, five prisoners who escaped from a high-security prison jointly run with the US-led coalition have been recaptured by Kurdish forces, a Kurdish security official told AFP.

In south Baghdad, a US soldier on patrol was killed when his vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb in the pre-dawn hours.

His death brought the number of US soldiers killed in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 2,431, according to an AFP tally based on Pentagon figures.

Fourteen Iraqis were killed and six wounded in a pair of suicide car bombings at the checkpoint leading to the Baghdad International Airport.

Two vehicles packed with explosives were detonated in a parking lot near the checkpoint, the US military said in a statement, adding that the attacks did not target the base itself.

The violence came as Maliki appeared set to break weeks of deadlock over the new government by leaving the controversial interior and defense portfolios vacant and instead keeping them in his own hands for the time being.

"I think prime minister Nuri al-Maliki will announce the government without interior and defense," Bahaa al-Aaraji, an MP close to Shiite radical leader Moqtada al-Sadr, told reporters on the sidelines of a parliamentary session.

"He will be the acting minister of interior and defense and then, maybe after two or three weeks, he will appoint the appropriate people for these jobs," he said.

An MP from Maliki's own Dawa party, Hassan al-Seniad, had already raised the possibility of the premier designate keeping some portfolios in his own hands as he bids to finalise a cabinet line-up in the next 48 hours.

But the manner in which the new premier has conducted the talks drew an angry response from one of the smaller factions in his Shiite United Iraqi Alliance, which announced that it was abandoning the list on which it fought December's parliamentary elections.

"Our decision is final," said Sabah al-Saadi, spokesman for the Fadhila party, which holds 15 of the alliance's 128 seats in the 275-seat parliament.

"Even if they give us the oil ministry now, we will not rejoin the negotiations," he said.

The party held the oil ministry in the outgoing government but reports suggested the portfolio was likely to go to Shiite independent Hussein Shahristani in the new line-up.

Fadhila's walkout was matched by threats to quit the talks from the main Sunni Arab bloc, whose participation in a national unity government is seen as vital if the sting is to be taken out of the insurgency raging in Sunni areas.

"If we don't get our rights, we will review our participation in the entire political process," warned Salman al-Jumayli, an MP with the National Concord Front.

"We are still negotiating to form the government and are asking for the ministries of education, health and planning.

"We still have not received any answers to these demands," he said.

The Sunnis would also like to retain the defense ministry, especially if the interior ministry remains with one of the main Shiite parties.

Aside from the attack on Baghdad airport, three other bombs killed 11 people around the city.

In the north between Kirkuk and Tikrit, a convoy of Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari's bodyguards was hit by a bomb killing three and wounding three, though the Kurdish politician was not travelling in the motorcade.

In the oil-refining town of Baiji, the scene of much recent unrest, gunmen shot dead a man in front of his home before fleeing, said police, who said the victim may have been working for US forces.

Clashes between insurgents and police as well as a suicide car bomb claimed the lives of a policemen and two civilians in the northern city of Mosul.

Eight people were killed and six were wounded in and around the restive city of Baquba, where three kidnappings also took place, police said.

Outside the city, insurgents late Saturday destroyed at least two small shrines of local Shiite holy figures, the Abdullah bin Ali shrine in the village of Wajhiya and the Tamim shrine, both in mixed Sunni-Shiite areas.

Meanwhile, two British soldiers were killed Saturday and one other wounded after a roadside bomb exploded in the southern Iraqi city of Basra, the Ministry of Defence said.

Their deaths bring to 111 the number of British troop fatalities in Iraq since the March 2003 US-led invasion.

Also in Basra, some 2,000 followers of Shiite Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani marched in protest at allegations from the regional governor linking local clerics to terrorism.

The demonstration came a day after Basra governor Mohammed Musabah al-Waili blamed two prominent Shiite clerics, seen as Sistani envoys, for a recent upsurge in violence in the city.

Waili had also suspended the city's police chief Major General Hassan Sawadi and demanded the resignation of the commander of the Iraqi army's Basra-based 10th Brigade, General Abdul Latif Thaban.