Dr Durakovic, a former US army adviser who is now a professor of medicine, said in 2000 he had found "significant" DU levels in two-thirds of the 17 Gulf veterans he had tested.

In May 2002, he sent a team to Afghanistan to interview and examine civilians there.

The UMRC says: "Independent monitoring of the weapon types and delivery systems indicate that radioactive, toxic uranium alloys and hard-target uranium warheads were being used by the coalition forces." There is no official support for its claims, or backing from other scientists.

Shock results

It says Nangarhar province was a strategic target zone during the Afghan conflict for the deployment of a new generation of deep-penetrating "cave-busting" and seismic shock warheads.

The UMRC says its team identified several hundred people suffering from illnesses and conditions similar to those of Gulf veterans, probably because they had inhaled uranium dust.

To test its hypothesis that some form of uranium weapon had been used, the UMRC sent urine specimens from 17 Afghans for analysis at an independent UK laboratory.

It says: "Without exception, every person donating urine specimens tested positive for uranium internal contamination.

"The results were astounding: the donors presented concentrations of toxic and radioactive uranium isotopes between 100 and 400 times greater than in the Gulf veterans tested in 1999.

"If UMRC's Nangarhar findings are corroborated in other communities across Afghanistan, the country faces a severe public health disaster... Every subsequent generation is at risk."

It says troops who fought in Afghanistan and the staff of aid agencies based in Afghanistan are also at risk.

Scientific acceptance

Dr Durakovic's team used as a control group three Afghans who showed no signs of contamination. They averaged 9.4 nanograms of uranium per litre of urine.

The average for his 17 "randomly selected" patients was 315.5 nanograms, he said. Some were from Jalalabad, and others from Kabul, Tora Bora, and Mazar-e-Sharif. A 12-year-old boy living near Kabul had 2,031 nanograms.

The maximum permissible level for members of the public in the US was 12 nanograms per litre, Dr Durakovic said.

A second UMRC visit to Afghanistan in September 2002 found "a potentially much broader area and larger population of contamination". It collected 25 more urine samples, which bore out the findings from the earlier group.

Dr Durakovic said he was "stunned" by the results he had found, which are to be published shortly in several scientific journals.

Identical outcome

He told BBC News Online: "In Afghanistan there were no oil fires, no pesticides, nobody had been vaccinated - all explanations suggested for the Gulf veterans' condition.

"But people had exactly the same symptoms. I'm certainly not saying Afghanistan was a vast experiment with new uranium weapons. But use your common sense."

The UK Defence Ministry says it used no DU weapons in Afghanistan, nor any others containing uranium in any form.

A spokesman for the US Department of Defense told BBC News Online the US had not used DU weapons there.

He could not comment on Dr Durakovic's findings of elevated uranium levels in Afghan civilians.

They said "responsibility for much of Iraq's territorial security should have been transferred to Iraqi control" by December. At that point, al-Maliki said, two of Iraq's most violent provinces, Baghdad and Anbar, may be the last where coalition forces maintain control.

But Tuesday's violence north of Baghdad showed that goal may not be easy to achieve.

Gunmen riding in an Opel sedan car shot and killed four ironsmiths and wounded one as they were riding a pickup truck to work in Mosul, the capital of Ninevah province, said police Brig. Abdul-Hamid Khalaf.

A drive-by shooting at a minibus killed three Iraqi day labourers and wounded four as they drove to work at a farm near Baqouba. Police said the casualties, all majority Shiites, appeared to be the latest victims of sectarian attacks by minority Sunni Arabs in Diyala province.

On Jan. 31, a U.S. Embassy report had found security "critical" in Anbar province, the Sunni-dominated region west of Baghdad that includes Ramadi and Fallujah. The report also said the security situation was considered serious in the provinces of Baghdad, Basra, Ninevah, Tamim, Salahuddin and Diyala - all of them religiously mixed.

In Baghdad, gunmen in a speeding car killed one of the many vendors who sell cigarettes from small wooden stands on the side of streets in the capital.

Elsewhere, according to police, a car bomb exploded in New Baghdad, an eastern part of the capital, killing five and wounding eight, while a high school teacher on his way to work near Kirkuk was killed in a drive-by shooting.

Yesterday Nuri al-Maliki, the new Iraqi prime minister, told a joint press conference with Mr Blair in Baghdad that Iraqi forces could take over from the US-led coalition in 16 of the country's 18 provinces by the end of the year.

Mr Blair and Mr Maliki said the "process of transition" would start in some provinces in the coming months, and that "by the end of this year responsibility for much of Iraq's territorial security should have been transferred to Iraqi control".

Mr Blair, in his fifth visit to Iraq since the invasion, flew to Baghdad to become the first leader to greet the new Iraqi government, which was inaugurated on Saturday. Mr Blair is investing his hopes of salvaging his legacy in the new Iraqi prime minister and described the government as "a new beginning" after three years of hard struggle.

President Bush echoed him yesterday, saying that the new government was "the beginning of something new constitutional democracy at the heart of the Middle East". Mr Bush acknowledged that there had been mistakes in Iraq, but said repeatedly that there had been "incremental" progress.

Mr Maliki surprised Mr Blair's team at the press conference by saying the UK handover to Iraqi forces could begin in June. British officials later corrected this, saying that the planned date was actually July.

Mr Blair preferred not to put an explicit timetable on it, saying that such a move depended on conditions on the ground, and the government's most optimistic public timetable has Iraq taking full control of security within a four-year period. But a joint statement issued by Mr Blair and Mr Maliki acknowledged their agreement to make an early start.

The statement said the new Iraqi government would "in the weeks ahead work with the MNF [multinational force] on the details of transition to Iraqi control".

Britain has responsibility for four provinces in Iraq. After Muthanna, the next province for handover to Iraqi forces by Britain is Maysan. But Basra, where most of the 7,200 British forces are stationed, is - the two prime ministers admitted yesterday - a serious problem, and the new government is to send a delegation there soon.

The fate of Dhi Qar, which is in the British sector but is run in effect by 2,600 Italian forces, is uncertain, since the new Italian prime minister, Romano Prodi, says he wants a speedy withdrawal.

Mr Maliki denied that the country was in the midst of a civil war. "The multinational forces did let us improve the capability of our forces but the Iraqi forces still need more," he told reporters. "Iraq's forces still need more backing, more training and more armaments in order for the Iraq security forces to take over the security fully. We will start in the provinces and we will do them in turn."

His total of 263,000 Iraqi police and army is still short of the 325,000 target, although this is expected to be completed by the end of the year.

Mr Blair stayed overnight in Kuwait and then travelled into Baghdad's high-security green zone by Chinook helicopter. After meeting the prime minister, Mr Blair saw the Iraqi president, Jalal Talabani, who hailed him as "a great friend to the people of Iraq".

The British prime minister said after the meeting: "What we want to see is a sovereign independent nation in theory and in practice."

Mr Blair's official spokesman denied that talk of a "new beginning" offered a hostage to fortune, arguing that a cabinet formed from Shia, Sunni and Kurd leaders after a successful election involving more than 12 million people was proof of the significance of the weekend's landmark cabinet settlement. But both Mr Blair and Mr Bush risk the remark rebounding on them severely as Sunni and Shia insurgents continue to bomb the multinational force - and themselves.

"Troop withdrawal comes after the process of Iraqi-isation, not the other way round," the prime minister's spokesman said. The Americans have drafted in a further 650 forces from Kuwait to help "stabilise", amid fear of violence after the formation of the new cabinet.

A senior British official predicted that a full handover of security could be achieved within the four-year term of the new Iraqi government. "The aim is to take Iraq to a position where the multinational force is able to withdraw during its [the new government's] period in office," said the official, who was accompanying Mr Blair into Baghdad.

"During the four years, the present role and structure of the multinational force will change and come to an end."