Albania - 120 non-combat troops, mainly patrolling airport in Mosul; no plans to withdraw.

Armenia - 46 soldiers serving under Polish command through end of 2006; no plans to withdraw.

Australia - Roughly 470 troops and support personnel in Iraq, plus several hundred in the Persian Gulf region; no dates set for any pullout.

Azerbaijan - 150 troops, mostly serving as sentries, on patrols and protecting a dam near the city of Hadid Ha; no plans to withdraw.

Bosnia-Herzegovina - 36 experts identifying and destroying unexploded ordnance; experts being rotated every six months; no plans to withdraw.

Britain - About 8,000 troops in southern Iraq, roughly 2,000 others in the Persian Gulf region.

Bulgaria - Deployed 120 non-combat troops to guard refugee camp north of Baghdad after pulling out 380 infantry troops in December.

Czech Republic - 100 military police training Iraqi officers; mission extended to end of 2006.

Denmark - 530 troops patrolling southern city of Basra; parliament on Tuesday cut force by 80 and extended mission to June 30, 2007.

El Salvador - 380 soldiers doing peacekeeping and humanitarian work in Hillah; no immediate plans to withdraw.

Estonia - 40 troops, mostly infantry, serving under U.S. command in Baghdad, manning checkpoints, patrolling neighbourhoods, searching houses for weapons, escorting convoys; extension beyond end of 2006 expected.

Georgia - About 900 combat forces, medics and support personnel serving under U.S. command in Baqouba; no plans to withdraw or reduce contingent.

Italy - About 2,600 troops, most in southern city of Nasiriyah, involved in training, security and reconstruction; force to be reduced to 1,600 by mid-June and remaining troops expected to be withdrawn by year's end.

Japan - 600 non-combat troops based in Samawah to purify water, do other humanitarian tasks; decision on possible withdrawal postponed until Baghdad appoints new defence, interior ministers.

Kazahstan - 27 military engineers; defence minister has suggested a pullout by July.

Latvia - 135 soldiers, mostly infantry, manning checkpoints, patrolling and escorting materials; mission expires at end of 2006.

Lithuania - 60 soldiers, mostly infantry, serving with Danish contingent near Basra in southern Iraq; mission to last at least through end of 2006.

Macedonia - 32 troops providing security in Taji, north of Baghdad; no plans to withdraw.

Moldova - 11 bomb defusal experts; mission expires in July; extension expected.

Mongolia 160 troops; no plans to withdraw.

Netherlands - 15 soldiers as part of NATO mission training police, army officers; mandate expires in August.

Poland - 900 non-combat troops; commands multinational force south of Baghdad; mission expires at end of year; government weighing whether to extend.

Romania - 860 troops, including 400 infantry, 150 mine experts, 100 military police, 50 military intelligence plus medics and UN guards; no plans to withdraw.

Slovakia - 104 troops stationed in Hillah in Polish sector, mostly engaged in de-mining; no plans to withdraw.

South Korea - In process of reducing its 3,200-member contingent in northern Iraq by 1,000 troops by end of year.

Some observers say Iraq's deteriorating security situation is an argument for coalition forces to stay - not leave - and perhaps even deploy additional forces to tamp down violence as Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki works to shift security duties to Iraqis over the next 18 months.

Underscoring the reality, the Pentagon said Tuesday it was shifting about 1,500 U.S. troops from Kuwait to western Iraq's volatile Anbar province to help the Iraqis establish order there.

Increased instability, violence and Islamic extremism in Iraq could require "a larger role for overt, co-ordinated, multilateral intervention, involving the key regional powers, to stabilize the situation," defence analyst Christopher Langton of the London-based International Institute of Strategic Studies warns in a new report.

Defence Secretary Des Browne of Britain, the No. 2 military presence in Iraq with about 8,000 troops, conceded Tuesday that the latest attacks were "a major concern."

Two British soldiers were killed and two others wounded in a roadside bombing in Basra on Sunday, bringing to nine the number of British personnel who have died in the southern Iraqi city this month and pushing total British deaths in the past three years to 113. American deaths, meanwhile, are approaching 2,500.

Despite the bloodshed, public opposition to Britain's involvement and reports that more than 1,000 British troops may have deserted since 2003, Browne insisted there were no plans to pull British troops from Iraq.

"We will continue to remain in Iraq until the Iraqi government is confident that the Iraqi security forces are capable of providing security without assistance from the coalition forces," he told the British Broadcasting Corp.

"That will, of course, be in consultation with us and our allies. But the decision on withdrawal will be based on achieving the right conditions but not on a particular timetable."

The United States still provides most of the muscle for the mission, with about 132,000 troops in Iraq.

Officials have said they would like that number reduced to about 100,000 by the end of 2006, although White House spokesman Tony Snow cautioned last week that U.S. President George W. Bush is unlikely to say "we're going to be out in one year, two years, four years."

In the months after the March 2003 invasion, the multinational force peaked at about 300,000 soldiers from 38 countries, including 250,000 U.S. troops. But the coalition has shrunk steadily ever since, with Spain and Ukraine among the larger contributors to pull out.

The latest blow to the current 26-country coalition is Italy's decision to pull its remaining 2,600 troops out by the end of the year.

Italy's new defence minister, Arturo Parisi, was quoted by Italian media Tuesday as saying "Italy won't turn its back on Iraq" and would offer unspecified political, civil and humanitarian support.

And Italian Foreign Minister Massimo D'Alema wrote in Tuesday's Corriere della Sera newspaper that the pullout would be carried out "with the minimum possible risk for our soldiers, who have paid a high price," referring to the deaths of 31 Italian troops in Iraq.

"We'll be able to deal with this decision while keeping in mind the consequences for the Iraqi people and the need to co-ordinate with coalition forces," said D'Alema, confirming the force would be reduced to 1,600 by mid-June.

South Korea, the third-largest contributor of forces, began bringing troops home this week as part of a plan to withdraw about 1,000 of its 3,200 soldiers from northern Iraq by year's end.

Other coalition members are thinking about drawing down their forces.

Legislators in Denmark, which has 530 personnel in Iraq, approved a government plan Tuesday to cut the contingent by 80 troops. They also extended the mission to June 30, 2007.

Japan has about 600 non-combat troops doing humanitarian work in southern Iraq, and says it won't decide whether to withdraw them until Baghdad appoints new defence and interior ministers. There has been speculation the Japanese force will be withdrawn this year.

And in Poland, the prime minister said this month that his government was weighing whether to keep troops in Iraq beyond the end of 2006. Poland has 900 troops in central Iraq, where it leads an international force.

The movement of the brigade comes as senior U.S. officials in Iraq begin to raise doubts about whether security conditions therewill permit significant troop reductions in the coming months, it said.

The brigade comes from the U.S. Army First Armored Division, which has been deployed in Kuwait for months as a reserve in case conditions in Iraq deteriorated.

U.S. officials said the additional troops would be deployed at multiple hotspots in Anbar Province, a Sunni insurgent stronghold west of Baghdad.

Some of the troops are likely to be sent to the city of Ramadi,where a U.S. brigade has been trying to quell a surge in violence.

Earlier this year, reports here said top U.S. commanders in Iraq were considering options for reducing troop levels during 2006 if ground conditions improved. Some reports have suggested that the number might drop to about 100,000 from the approximately133,000 currently stationed in the country.

About 1,500 soldiers from a reserve force based in Kuwait were deployed in Anbar province, an insurgent stronghold stretching from Baghdad to the Syrian border. The deployment was described officially as "short-term". Military officials quoted anonymously yesterday said it should last no more than four months, but it was a blow to the Bush administration's hopes of bringing troops home after the formation of the new government in Baghdad. There were about 130,000 US troops in Iraq before the deployment and that figure is unlikely to change for several months, military officials said.

"The situation in al-Anbar province is currently a challenge but is not representative of the overall security situation in Iraq, which continues to improve as the Iraqi security forces increasingly take the lead," Lieutenant Colonel Michelle Martin-Hing said yesterday.

But the bloodshed nationwide showed no sign of abating yesterday when bomb attacks killed at least 46 people, wounding dozens more.

A car bomb exploded at a market in Husseiniyah, a Shia neighbourhood north of Baghdad, killing 25, and 12 more were killed when a car packed with explosives detonated at a car sales centre in Hillah, 60 miles south of the capital. A bomb left in a plastic bag in a Baghdad bakery blew up, killing nine.

The new Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, held talks yesterday in an attempt to forge an agreement on who should serve as defence and interior ministers in his government. More than a week since the government took office and nearly six months since elections, Iraqi parties cannot agree on the two crucial portfolios.

Mr Maliki faces huge challenges. He demanded "answers" from US commanders on civilian deaths at the hands of their troops, after news emerged that an official report would find that American marines killed 24 civilians in cold blood in the town of Haditha last November.

Alarmed by the increasing turmoil in Basra, he is set to head south today in a bid to wrest Iraq's increasingly restive second city from the clutches of warring Shia factions and oil smuggling gangs.

"We must restore security in Basra and if any defy peaceful solutions then force will be the solution," he told Reuters. "There's no way we can leave Basra, the gateway to Iraq, our imports and exports, at the mercy of criminal, terrorist gangs. We will use force against these gangs."

Officials said they hoped Mr Maliki's visit would help calm tensions. Predominantly Shia Basra has largely escaped the violence of more mixed cities such as Baghdad. But the last year has seen a rapid deterioration in security as competing Shia factions vie for control and influence.

The main rivals are the armed Badr organisation, which is close to the Supreme Council for Islamic Revolution in Iraq, led by militant Shia cleric Moqtada al-Sadr, and the smaller Fadhila party, whose power base is in Basra. They blame each other for corruption and organised crime and for controlling militias which have infiltrated police units.

The rivalry worsened earlier this month when the governor of Basra province, a member of Fadhila, demanded the dismissal of the city's police chief. Basra residents, meanwhile, criticise the British forces there for allowing the city to slip steadily out of control. Mr Maliki said: "I will go tomorrow with a delegation from the government and from the parliament. We will spare nothing to find a solution."

At the weekend, officials from Fadhila, which controls the governorship of Basra province, said it could halt oil exports to win concessions from Baghdad. During talks to form the government, the party demanded control of the oil ministry.

The post went to Hussein Sharistani, the former nuclear scientist with close ties to Ayatollah Sistani, who took office vowing to stamp out corruption in the country's oil sector. Basra dominates the drilling and export of the majority of Iraq's oil. But oil officials estimate that smugglers, some of whom are linked to the Shia militias, are siphoning millions of dollars a week of much-needed reconstruction revenues.

Backstory

Iraq has taken more troops to occupy than to invade. About 100,000 US soldiers and marines (alongside 26,000 British troops) entered in March 2001; neo-cons in Washington who pushed for the war assumed most would be home by the end of 2001. More than three years on, there are 130,000 US and 7,200 British troops in the country, and the insurgency shows no sign of waning after December's elections and last week's new government. However, the US is down from a peak of 150,000 troops in January last year.

That divide helped stoke Monday's deadly anti-western riots, the latest of several bouts of unrest that have wracked Afghanistan in the past year. The worst riots seen in Kabul for years began after a U.S. military truck whose brakes failed careered down a hill and plowed into cars at an intersection, killing at least one Afghan.

Afghans generally are grateful to the U.S.-led military alliance for ousting the Taliban in 2001 and welcome help from international charities. But many residents also long to lift themselves out of poverty and take control of their destinies, more than four years after the downfall of the Taliban's strict Islamic rule.

"We don't want these foreigners, they should go home. They're damaging our society, the economy is terrible and we're so poor. And they're looting Afghanistan. Why aren't they building factories?" asked Faisal Agha, 45, a policeman who was injured in the riots that left at least 11 dead and scores wounded.

"Now there's prostitution, alcohol. There's more vice," he said from his hospital bed, his eyes puffy and his face bruised after falling during Monday's chaos.

Between 3,000 and 4,000 foreign civilians are believed to be working in Afghanistan alongside 23,000 American troops and 9,000 members of a NATO-led multinational force, mostly from western countries.

Foreign intervention has been a thread running through the past quarter-century of strife in Afghanistan.

Soviet forces invaded in 1979, and Arab fighters helped drive them out a decade later. After the Taliban took control in 1996, establishing a theocracy that banned music and television, and sheltered Osama bin Laden.

The U.S.-led invasion in late 2001 pushed the Taliban aside, a wrenching change that exposed many Afghans directly to western culture for the first time as aid workers and military forces came to help rebuild the country.

Four years later, many Afghans are unimpressed by what they have seen, although they are quick to distinguish between foreigners who are here to help and those seen as a negative influence.

"We have two kinds of foreigners here. Those that indulge in prostitution and alcohol, and we reject them," said Mohammed Anwar, standing outside a shop still smouldering Tuesday after rioters burned it because they believed it sold alcohol.

"But the others have come to help us in reconstruction and we welcome them," said the unemployed 45-year-old father of eight. "And they're far more numerous."

Still, even Afghans' famed hospitality - tea or soft drinks are mandatory for all guests - is being strained by the economic inequities and foreign military presence.

Unemployment for Afghans is about 40 per cent, while foreigners live in spacious compounds and manoeuvre expensive four-wheel-drive vehicles past blue-shrouded women holding unclothed children and begging for money.

Rents in some areas have risen by 1,000 per cent since the Taliban's ouster as international organizations have moved in, pricing most Afghans out of the market.

Prices of mutton quadrupled as comparatively expensive restaurants with largely foreign clientele blossomed around Kabul.

While the economy grew by eight per cent last year, spurred by the influx of aid and illicit revenues from the drug industry, many Afghans now feel worse off because inflation reached 16 per cent.

There also is anger over the civilian deaths caused by coalition military action against Taliban guerrillas. The latest incident occurred last week, when a U.S. air strike killed at least 16 civilians in a southern village. A human rights group said as many as 34 civilians died.

During the past four years, at least 180 civilians have died as a result of coalition action, according to a count based on Associated Press reports. The U.S. military says it does all it can to prevent such casualties.

After Monday's traffic accident in Kabul, rioters stoned the American vehicles and then poured into the city centre, looting goods and ransacking the offices of foreign aid groups, buildings associated with the U.S.-backed government of President Hamid Karzai, stores where liquor was believed sold and a brothel.

At least 11 people were killed, most of them from gunshot wounds, according to three city hospitals. More than 100 people were wounded.

In the past year, Afghans have rioted after reports that the Muslim holy book was allegedly placed in a toilet by a guard at the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and after western newspapers published cartoons depicting the Prophet Mohammed. Each time, about a dozen people were killed.

Despite suspicions that anti-government elements could be fomenting the unrest, the main protagonists seemed to be angry young men.

Still, the signs on the street are that the irritation with foreigners has not hardened into widespread xenophobia.

"We want the good foreigners to stay in Afghanistan, to help us. Not these people who kill us, they must go," said Ahmed Mirwais Kabuli, 17, a wedding photographer.

Kabuli wore a black shirt emblazoned with the Union Jack. One of his life's dreams?

"I'd love to visit London," he said.