"People are clinging to Hezbollah, clinging to Hamas, because they see them as the remaining voices or forces in the Arab world that are resisting what they see as an ongoing hegemonic American-Israeli plan to control the region," he said.

"Right now, the United States is the kiss of death," Shibley Telhami, an expert on Arab public opinion at the University of Maryland, observed at the same meeting.

"If you really are trying to empower the ruling elites and nudge them to reform and be more representative, you have to deliver policies that are going to empower," he said. "What we see in Lebanon is a policy that is not empowering them. It is widening the gap [between the moderate elites and the people], and people are moving toward the militants."

That point was echoed by none other than Jordan's King Abdullah who, in the early days of the current round of fighting, had joined the Egyptian and Saudi governments in denouncing Hezbollah for "adventurism" in attacking across the Lebanese border, thus provoking Israel's devastating military campaign.

"A fact America and Israel must understand is that as long as there is aggression and occupation, there will be resistance and popular support for the resistance," Abdullah, arguably Washington's closest Arab ally, said Thursday. "People cannot sleep and wake up to pictures of the dead and images of destruction in Lebanon and Gaza and ... say 'we want moderation.' Moderation needs deeds."

"Unfortunately, Israeli policy ... has contributed to the rise in the wave of extremism in the Arab world, and this war has come to weaken the voices of moderation," he went on, warning that even if Israel destroyed Hezbollah in Lebanon - an increasingly unlikely prospect - "a new Hezbollah would emerge, maybe in Jordan, Syria, or Egypt" unless a comprehensive peace settlement was reached.

Even before the outbreak of this latest war between Israel and Hezbollah, Washington's hopes of regional transformation appeared to be dimming fast.

Besides Lebanon, whose "Cedar Revolution" last year was repeatedly cited by the Bush administration as vindication of its domino theory of democratic change, the two other Arab polities in which it has invested most of its hopes for transformation - Iraq and the Palestinian Authority (PA) - were already in deep trouble.

In the PA, not only had Hamas, the Islamist party on the State Department's terrorism list, won last January's democratic parliamentary elections, but a subsequent U.S.-led aid and diplomatic embargo against its government only strengthened its popularity at home, partly at the expense of Washington's preferred interlocutor, the Fatah Party's Mahmoud Abbas, president of the PA.

Moreover, Israel's U.S.-backed military campaign against Hamas, now in its sixth week, does not appear to have reduced its hold on public opinion.

In Iraq, where Washington is currently spending nearly $7 billion a month, a series of U.S.-organized elections appears only to have hastened the country's descent into a brutal sectarian civil war, a scenario conceded by two of Washington's top generals Thursday as having become increasingly possible.

"Sectarian violence probably is as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular," Gen. John Abizaid, the head of U.S. Central Command, told a Senate hearing here. "If not stopped, it is possible that Iraq could move toward civil war."

His remarks were echoed by the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Peter Pace, who was reacting to a leaked memo from Britain's outgoing ambassador to Iraq who warned Prime Minister Tony Blair that "the prospect of a low-intensity civil war and a de facto division of Iraq is probably more likely at this stage than a successful and substantial transition to a stable democracy."

Now, Israel's onslaught against Hezbollah, which has included the destruction of key infrastructure throughout the country, as well as Shia strongholds in southern Lebanon and south Beirut, has quite possibly dealt a lethal blow to the government of the moderate, pro-Western Prime Minister Fouad Siniora, even as it has boosted the popularity of Hezbollah - contrary to the initial expectations in both Washington and Tel Aviv.

Even Hezbollah's fiercest Lebanese foe, Druze leader Walid Jumblatt, who during the "Cedar Revolution" praised Bush's transformation strategy as "the start of a new Arab world" comparable to the fall of the Berlin Wall, told the Financial Times this week that he was forced to support the Shia militia against "brutal Israeli aggression" that would result in the weakening of the central government and the strengthening of Hezbollah and, through it, Syria and Iran.

"All American policy in the Middle East is at stake because their failure in Palestine, then failure in Iraq, and now this failure in Lebanon will lead to a new Arab world where the so-called radical Arabs will profit," he said, adding that "this is ... not the new Middle East of Ms. [Secretary of State Condoleezza] Rice."

Moreover, the situation in Lebanon - particularly the devastation wrought by Israel's military campaign against Hezbollah and Washington's support for it - increasingly threatens the U.S. position in Iraq by further alienating its majority Shia population and its leadership, many of whom have close ties to their Lebanese co-religionists.

While faction leader Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army, which battled U.S. forces in 2004, has been holding big anti-U.S. demonstrations in Baghdad since the Israeli offensive began in mid-July, Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani, the single strongest and most influential voice for moderation in Iraq's Shia community, warned last Sunday after a particularly deadly Israeli air strike in which dozens of civilians were killed in Qana that "dire consequences will befall the region ... if an immediate cease-fire in this Israeli aggression is not imposed."

According to Juan Cole, a Middle East expert at the University of Michigan and president of the U.S. Middle East Studies Association (MESA), Sistani's warning was aimed directly at the United States. "Sistani could call massive anti-U.S. and anti-Israel demonstrations," noted Cole.

"Given Iraq's profound political instability, this development could be extremely dangerous," he wrote on his blog. "The U.S. is already not winning against a Sunni Arab insurgency. ... If 16 million Shiites turned on the U.S. because of its wholehearted support for Israel's actions in Lebanon, the U.S. military mission in Iraq could quickly become completely and urgently untenable."

Meanwhile, Washington's most loyal Sunni-led allies, as noted by Jordan's King Abdullah, also feel under growing threat by popular support for Hezbollah and the radicalization among their subjects provoked by the current Israeli campaign.

"Arab leaders are seen by the public as American puppets who have no standing of their own," according to Hassan Barari, a senior researcher at Jordan's Center for Strategic Studies, writing for the Bitter Lemons Web site.

"The Americans and Israelis are once again giving victory to extremists, thus critically emasculating moderate forces and their allies," he wrote, noting that Hezbollah "has managed to expose the weakness and docility of Arab leaders."

At the same time, however, the very weakness of these regimes, combined with the fact that the gap between the rulers and the ruled has now widened to such a dangerous extent, means that the Bush administration's pressure on Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and other authoritarian states to implement political reform has come to abrupt halt.

(Inter Press Service)

As is often the case in Iraq, accounts of the fighting in Mosul were confused and the U.S. military offered only scant information on the gunbattles which police sources agreed lasted from about 6.30 a.m. (0200 GMT) until just after midday.

A source in the city morgue said it had received 20 bodies from the fighting, including those of five policemen, but police sources said four policemen and four militants died during six hours of clashes that also drew in U.S. and Iraqi troops.

"We have killed a number of them (insurgents) and burned their cars. Now the west bank is 100 percent secured," Nineveh police chief General Wathiq al-Hamdani told state television, adding that the insurgents were members of al Qaeda.

The governor of Nineveh province imposed a curfew until 6 a.m. (0200 GMT) on Saturday.

Police sources said several roadside bombs exploded shortly after dawn, followed by gunfights between police and insurgents firing mortars and rocket-propelled grenades.

CAR BOMBS

Two car bombs also exploded, one outside the offices of a Kurdish political party and a police station, which killed Colonel Jassim Muhammad Bilal and two bodyguards, they said.

The U.S. military said according to initial reports the attack had been on the Iraqi Police Emergency Response Battalion and confirmed the death of a senior police officer. It said Iraqi and U.S. forces were on the scene.

Mosul, Iraq's third largest city, has a volatile mix of mostly Sunnis Arabs on the west bank of the Tigris and ethnic Kurds on the east. It has also seen Sunni insurgent violence against U.S. forces and the Shi'ite- and Kurdish-led government.

The United States recently announced it was moving more than 3,500 troops from the 172nd Stryker Brigade in Mosul to Baghdad to help rein in worsening sectarian violence there.

Shi'ite Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki's national unity government has struggled to contain the violence, which has frustrated efforts by Washington to hand over more security control to Iraqi forces and pave the way for a troop withdrawal.

Sadr, a key player in the government, saw tens of thousands of his supporters answer his call to gather in Baghdad after Friday prayers for a demonstration in support of Hizbollah.

"With God's help, the Mehdi Army and Hizbollah will be victorious," chanted the protesters, some symbolically wearing white burial shrouds, during the peaceful demonstration in the sprawling slum district of Sadr City.

So-called "rogue" elements of Sadr's Mehdi Army militia, which controls much of eastern Baghdad, have battled Iraqi and U.S. forces in recent weeks as the Iraqi government seeks to regain control of the capital's streets.

State television said a million people had gathered for the rally, but this could not be independently confirmed. A dense sea of marchers slowly moved along al Shuhada, the slum's main street, many waving yellow Hizbollah flags and holding pictures of the group's leader, Hassan Nasrallah.

"Oh God, Oh God, make Hassan Nasrallah triumph," they chanted.

But the sectarian violence is "as bad as I've seen it, in Baghdad in particular," and civil war is a possibility, the top US general in the Middle East, John Abizaid, warned Congress on Thursday.

His assessment was only the latest sign of high-level concern that the situation has drifted rapidly toward civil war since national elections last December.

Britain's outgoing ambassador to Iraq is reported to have advised his government that "a low-intensity civil war" was more likely than a transition to a stable democracy.

Last week, US commanders ordered more US troops to Baghdad after a wave of kidnappings, assassinations, massacres and bombings engulfed an Iraqi-led effort to secure the capital.

Abizaid said the situation in Baghdad was at a "decisive" juncture but he believed Iraqis would ultimately compromise "because the alternative is so stark."

Senators wanted to know what civil war would mean for the mission of the 133,000 US troops in Iraq.

"I'm reluctant to speculate about that," US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said. "It could lead to a discussion that suggests that we presume that's going to happen."

Senator John Warner, the Republican chairman of the
Senate Armed Services Committee, warned that if Iraq does descend into civil war, the administration may have to seek a new mandate from the US Congress.

"If that were to come about, I think the American people would ask, 'Well, which side are we going to fight on? Or do we fight both? And did we send our troops there to do that? We thought we sent them there to liberate the Iraqis, which we have done at a great sacrifice, 2,500-plus," he said in an interview with PBS television.

Independent analysts said civil war was not a foregone conclusion and that military action and political moves could yet contain and suppress the violence.

Much depends, though, on how susceptible an already weak political center in Iraq is to pressure from both Sunni and Shiite extremists behind the violence.

If it leads to the collapse of Iraq's central government and security forces along sectarian lines, the US mission would become untenable, some analysts believe.

"Unsettling though it may sound, the United States could end up with no alternative to pulling out of a country that had degenerated into chaos," said Loren Thompson, director of the Lexington Institute, a Washington group that specializes in military analysis.

"It seems improbable, but our role in Iraq is to build democracy so if the center doesn't hold, there is nothing left to defend," he said.

A withdrawal of US forces in the midst of a civil war would be "a huge defeat for American diplomacy, in fact possibly the greatest defeat ever," he said.

"However, there is no point in sticking around to preside over a melt down. If a country is going to divide along sectarian lines, it would be very dubious strategy to try to prevent a natural process from unfolding," he said.

Other analysts believe, however, that too much is at stake in Iraq for the United States to abandon the fight.

A US pullout would mean skyrocketing oil prices, the creation of a safe haven for extremists and leaving
Iran as the dominant power in the region, according to this line of reasoning.

Andrew Krepinevich, head of the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, said the administration would be forced to choose sides in a civil war, and it would not be alone.

Arab states dominated by Sunnis, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, would likely back the Sunnis, and Iran would step up its support for Shiites, setting the stage for a regional conflict, he said.

Abizaid, who said he has rarely seen the Middle East "so unsettled or so volatile," suggested such a broader conflict already is unfolding.

He highlighted Iran's support for Shiite militias in Lebanon and Gaza as well as in Iraq.

"There's an obvious struggle in the region between moderates and extremists that touches every aspect of life," he said.

The investigation of the four men from the famed "Rakkasans" -- the 3rd Combat Brigade of the 101st Airborne Division -- is expected to spotlight the US military's controversial and opaque rules of engagement in Iraq.

Civilian defence lawyers have said orders from the Rakkasans' commander, Colonel Michael Steele, called for troops to "kill all military age males" during a raid on May 9 on a suspected Al-Qaeda base.

Civilian defence lawyers acting for Private Corey Clagett, Staff Sergeant Raymond Girouard, Specialist William Hunsaker and Specialist Juston Graber have argued that the defendants were following orders when they killed the Iraqis.

Clagett's attorney, Paul Bergrin, also alleged that his client had been mistreated since he was arrested during the probe of the May 9 Operation Iron Triangle, when his unit raided a suspected al-Qaeda base.

Bergrin said Clagett was held in a seven foot by seven foot (two metre) cell and was forced to sleep in shackles. "He's being treated like an animal, even though he's presumed innocent," the lawyer told the hearing.

Previous hearings have heard testimony that Clagett and Hunsaker killed their prisoners then lightly injured each other in order to support a story that the Iraqis had escaped from their plastic restraints and assaulted their captors.

On Thursday, the unit's medic testified that after the first shooting one of the captives was still alive -- although probably fatally wounded -- and that later a single shot rang out and he found the victim definitively dead.

The platoon medic, Specialist Micah Bevins, said that at the time of their capture the Iraqis "didn't show any signs of life-threatening injuries."

Later he returned to where the captives were being held and found two of them dead and one dying. He checked third's pulse. "There was nothing there to sustain life. The last few seconds of life," he said.

The medic went to get body bags and heard a single shot ring out. When he returned he found the third detainee dead and his brains on the ground, he said during his cross examination.

Later in the hearing, when shown a photograph of the prisoner, Bevins was asked how he could be sure that the victims brains had been blown out. "I don't think anybody brought cottage cheese," he told the hearing.

Another witness, Sergeant Armando Acevedo, gave evidence that supported the case that the defendants' unit, Charlie Company, had set out for its objective not intending to take any prisoners alive.

He said that he heard a radio transmission after the Iraqis were taken: "We're bringing back these detainees when they should be dead. But put them on the bird (helicopter) and bring them home."

Shortly afterwards, the three suspects were dead.

The hearing was adjourned until Friday, when military lawyers will decide whether there is enough evidence to bring charges at a full court martial.

"It's our position that you didn't prove anything in this case," Bergrin said for the defence.

The Rakkasans' commander, Steele, and three more potential defence witnesses have also refused to testify. At previous hearings, witnesses have testified that before the mission Steele had urged troops to kill all the men they encountered.

International human rights watchdogs have criticized US tactics in Iraq, which are alleged to have caused needless civilian casualties, but the military refuses to publicly discuss its rules of engagement.

Copyright © 2006 Agence France Presse. All rights reserved

The demonstration is to be held following Friday prayers in the teeming Baghdad suburb of Sadr City, home to some two million people, and comes at a tense time for the capital.

Sahib al-Ameri, general director of the Foundation for God's Martyrs, part of Sadr's movement said: "Thousands of Najaf people have set off for Baghdad as a response to Moqtada al-Sadr's invitation to take part."

Anger over Israeli attacks on Lebanon - which target Hezbollah but have caused widespread civilian casualties - has raised passions in Iraq, where Shia militias have an uneasy relationship with the US-backed government.

US forces have visibly tightened security around Sadr City, a working class Shia district where Sadr's supporters are openly armed.

"Fifteen-hundred of Sadr's followers from Basra have arrived to take part in the demonstration that had been called in Baghdad," said Sadr spokesman Akil al-Bahadli.

Blast kills 9

Meanwhile, a roadside blast has killed at least nine people in al-Amin, an eastern district of Baghdad, a police source says.

The powerful blast, which also left 14 wounded, hit Shorjah market in an area selling electrical appliances, sending a dirty plume of yellow dust up over the city skyline.

The attack near Rusafi Square in the shopping area of Rashid Street apparently targeted vendors and commercial stalls, said police Lt Ahmed Mohammed Ali.

He said the bomb was hidden in a parked motorcycle.

Another police source said casualties appeared to be civilians, rather than members of the security forces.

The attack occurred as Taro Aso, the Japanese foreign minister, was visiting Baghdad.

Violence in Iraq's capital and other restive areas is claiming around 100 lives every day.

Thursday's attack followed a bomb blast in Baghdad on Wednesday evening next to a soccer pitch which killed 12 and wounded 13, most of whom were players and spectators.

The fourth Nato soldier, the seventh to be killed since Monday, was Canadian. He was killed at 4:30am local time by a roadside bomb on a main road 40km (25 miles) west of Kandahar city, the capital of the province, which is regarded as the birthplace of the Taleban.

Two more Canadian soldiers were wounded, neither seriously, by a second roadside bomb on the same stretch of road four hours later. Kandahar city serves as the base for the 2,300 Canadian soldiers currently deployed in Afghanistan.

The Nato casualties came just hours after the deadliest suicide attack in the country since January, which destroyed a marketplace in the town of Panjwayi, itself just 30km (19 miles) from Kandahar city and the scene of intense recent fighting between Afghan and coalition forces and Taleban fighters.

The attacker drove a car filled with explosives into the town's main market, local Afghan officials said, killing 21 people and injuring 13. Some children were among the dead, according to an interior ministry spokesman.

The car exploded just 200 metres from a Nato convoy of three Canadian vehicles, according to a Canadian military spokesman. It was unclear whether the soldiers were the intended target of the blast.

The suicide bomb was the worst attack of its kind since a man rode a motorbike into a crowd as it left a wrestling match in the Afghan border town of Spin Boldak in January, killing 22 people.

The ambush of Nato soldiers occurred in the village of Pashmul, just to the west of Kandahar, at around 12:30pm local time as Nato and Afghan forces were "working to improve security" on the main road leading towards Kabul, Nato said.

Despite suffering the casualties, a statement released by the Nato-led International Security Assistance Force (Isaf), which formally assumed control of the military mission in Afghanistan on Monday, said its forces had "inflicted severe casualties on the insurgents and disrupted their leadership in the Pashmul area".

The three most seriously wounded soldiers were evacuated by helicopter for treatment in neighboring Helmand province, the other three to a hospital at Kandahar Airfield, the statement said.

"This attack, launched from a school, is yet another example of the insurgents' callous disregard for the future of Afghanistan," said Lieutenant General David Richards, the Nato force commander. "Such a building is intended to educate for the future, not be a hiding place for those who want to return Afghanistan to the past."

Elsewhere, ten Taleban insurgents were reported dead today by Afghan police in the Garmser district of Helmand, the barren unruly province under the control of 3,300 British soldiers. Mohammad Rasoul Aka, the local police chief, said the rebels were killed after Nato warplanes supported Afghan soldiers as they attacked Taleban bases in the area. Two Afghan police were wounded.

Eighteen Taleban fighters were killed in a similar raid on Tuesday, part of a series of operations aimed to wresting control of Gamser after the local government headquarters was captured and ransacked in July by Taleban forces.

Earlier, a British soldier killed during fighting in Afghanistan on Tuesday was hailed as an "inspiration" by a senior officer.

Captain Alex Eida, 29, of Hooley, Surrey, was a member of 7 Parachute Regiment, Royal Horse Artillery, and based at Colchester, Essex. He was one of three British soldiers who died in a Taleban ambush on their armoured vehicle during an early morning patrol this week.

Major Matt Crisp, second in command of 7 Para, said: "His maturity, professionalism and light yet authoritative command approach, combined with a sharp sense of humour and fun, inspired those around him.

"He was a man with style and charisma yet not a hint of arrogance or over confidence - always prepared to go the extra mile for his soldiers, colleagues and friends who willingly did the same for him.

"All of Capt Eida's best qualities were shown in Afghanistan. Professionally gifted, calm under pressure and hard working, he made a huge contribution. He loved and believed in what he was doing and thrived on the challenge. We have lost a valued colleague and friend."

The deaths of Capt Eida, 2nd Lieutenant Ralph Johnson and Lance Corporal Ross Nicholls bring the number British troops killed in action in Afghanistan this year to nine.