Several lawmakers questioned the validity of the vote.

Meanwhile, Iraqi soldiers also clashed Monday with gunmen near the holy city of Karbala during an operation to secure the area ahead of a religious festival on Saturday, leaving 14 gunmen and one soldier dead, the prime minister's office said.

Kidnappers also dragged off a popular soccer star in Baghdad, while a security crackdown in the city expanded into the upscale Mansour neighborhood.

An al-Qaida-affiliated group dismissed the Iraqi government's claim that the organization's second most important leader had been arrested, suggesting the man was not a senior figure and denying the terror group had suffered a significant blow.

On Sunday, Iraq's national security adviser announced the arrest of Hamed Jumaa Farid al-Saeedi, also known as Abu Humam or Abu Rana, and said that had left al-Qaida in Iraq suffering a "serious leadership crisis."

But the Mujahedeen Shura Council, an umbrella organization of Sunni Arab extremist groups that includes al-Qaida in Iraq, issued a statement Monday saying its "leadership was in the best condition."

The statement did not directly deny the arrest, or say what position al-Saeedi held, although it suggested he was not the No. 2 leader.

The security adviser, Mouwafak al-Rubaie, described al-Saeedi as the second most important al-Qaida in Iraq figure behind Abu Ayyub al-Masri, who is believed to have taken over the group after Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed by a U.S. airstrike in June.

Al-Saeedi was involved in the Feb. 22 bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra, al-Rubaie said. The attack inflamed tensions between Shiite and Sunni Muslims and set off reprisal killings that have killed hundreds of Iraqis, like those found in Baghdad on Monday.

Police said they the 33 bullet-riddled bodies all showed signs of torture and had their hands and feet bound. The men had been dumped around several neighborhoods, police said.

Two other bodies were found dumped on a highway in Kut, 100 miles southeast of Baghdad. Both had been shot in the head and chest, said Maamoun Ajil al-Robaiei at Kut hospital's morgue.

The Mujahedeen Shura Council's statement also said insurgents have been inflicting heavy losses on U.S. troops in western Anbar province and in Baghdad.

The U.S.-led coalition said seven of its personnel had been killed the past two days - five Americans and two Britons.

On Sunday, two U.S. Marines were killed in Anbar and two Army soldiers died from roadside bombs in Mosul, 225 miles northwest of Baghdad, and near Baqouba, 35 miles northeast of the capital. Another soldier was killed Monday by a roadside bomb. A sixth American died of non-combat injuries, the military said.

In the south, a roadside bomb killed two British soldiers and seriously wounded a third north of the southern city of Basra, a British military spokesman, Maj. Charlie Burbridge, said.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett arrived in the capital Monday on an unannounced visit - her first to Iraq since taking up the post in May.

"We do not underestimate the challenges ahead," Beckett said in a statement. "But we must not forget the progress made in the last twelve months in bringing the first democratically elected national unity government to the country, with a constitution voted for by the people."

South of the capital, Iraqi soldiers clashed with gunmen near the holy city of Karbala during an operation to secure the city ahead of a Shiite religious festival, the prime minister's office said. Tens of thousands of Shiite pilgrims are expected in Karbala, 50 miles south of the capital on Saturday to observe Shaaban, a mid-month religious celebration.

Fourteen gunmen were killed and another 22 were arrested, while one Iraqi soldier was also killed and another was wounded, the statement said.

On Saturday, police said 13 Pakistani and Indian Shiite pilgrims and their Iraqi driver had been ambushed and killed on their way to Karbala.

Assailants abducted Ghanim Ghudayer, a soccer star and member of Iraq's Olympic team. Considered one of the best players on Baghdad's Air Force Club, the 22-year-old was taken Sunday evening by unknown assailants, some of whom were wearing military uniforms, police said.

The U.S.-led coalition said the Iraqi army had begun searching the capital's Mansour district as part of a crackdown aimed at tackling violence in Baghdad neighborhood by neighborhood. U.S. soldiers would "observe and advise" during the operation, the military said.

The coalition also said five suspected insurgents and a child were killed and a second child was wounded during a raid in Muqdadiyah, about 60 miles north of Baghdad. The raid targeted "an individual with ties to movement of terrorist finances and foreign fighters into Iraq," the military said in a statement.

The Iraqi Defense Ministry said that over the previous 24 hours, its troops had killed 15 people suspected of involvement of insurgent activities. Iraqi police said clashes between gunmen and Iraqi forces in Musayyib, 40 miles south of Baghdad, resulted in the death of an Iraqi soldier and the arrest of about 100 gunmen.

Disagreements continued over the handover of Iraq's armed forces command from the U.S.-led coalition to the Iraqi government, and the Defense Ministry said a ceremony to mark the transition had been postponed indefinitely.

The two sides still need "to complete some legal and protocol procedures that will lead to a complete understanding between the Iraqi government and the multinational troops," the ministry said.

Handing over control from the coalition to Iraqi authorities is a key part of any eventual drawdown of U.S. troops in the country.

The sting comes a month after British police uncovered a plot to blow up several US-bound airliners using liquid explosives.

In October 2005, another Danish anti-terrorism operation led to the arrest of seven young Muslims in Copenhagen.

The identity of the new detainees was not revealed, but authorities said they were aged 18 to 33 and arrested during a police raid overnight in the heavily immigrant-populated neighbourhood of Vollsmose in the town of Odense.

PET chief Lars Findsen said in a statement that the arrests took place without incident after a lengthy period of surveillance.

He said PET decided to "intervene now" because it was "difficult to determine at what stage the preparations were."

"The PET's primary mission is to thwart and prevent terrorist acts, and the (intelligence) service decided it was time to go ahead with these arrests now after receiving information indicating that some people in the group were preparing a terrorist act," Findsen said.

Abu Bashar, an imam in the Vollsmose neighbourhood who knows several of the suspects personally, said the arrests did not come as a surprise, and that he felt the alleged terrorist attacks were linked to Denmark's participation in the war in
Iraq.

"I'm afraid that there will be a terrorist attack in Denmark because there are Danish soldiers deployed in Iraq, and I'm afraid of what (terrorist organisation) Al-Qaeda may do if Denmark doesn't withdraw its troops," he told Danish news agency Ritzau.

A staunch ally of the United States, Denmark has some 470 troops stationed in Basra, in southern Iraq, under British command.

The intelligence service said meanwhile it had been in contact with Muslim community officials "to inform them of the situation", as relations remain tense in the wake of the Mohammed cartoons row sparked in Denmark earlier this year.

Several of the suspects were to appear before a judge on Tuesday to be placed in detention.

In October 2005 Danish police arrested seven young Muslims, aged 16 to 22 and including one woman, in Copenhagen who were suspected of plotting terrorist attacks.

Four of them, of Bosnian, Palestinian, Syrian-Palestinian and Moroccan origin, were charged last month in Copenhagen with plotting attacks in Europe. The three others were released.

According to Danish authorities, the four men are linked to two accomplices arrested in Bosnia, a Swede originally from Serbia-Montenegro and a Dane originally from Turkey, now jailed in Sarajevo.

The pair have been accused of terrorism and illegal possession of weapons and explosives. Their trial opened in July in Sarajevo.

Meanwhile, the four in Denmark have been charged "for having, together with the two people detained in Bosnia, procured weapons and explosives with the aim of committing terrorist acts" in Europe.

The quartet have denied the charges during questioning. No date has been set for their trial.

Due to the fact he is a misanthropic piece of work, Abu Abdullah, a former youth football coach, praises to the sky both the London 7/7 bombings and the alleged and entirely ludicrous liquid bomb plot, the former an obvious false flag operation, complete with complimentary terror drills, and the latter an impossibility on an airliner, minus a pile of chemistry lab tools.

Even though Abdullah has been kicked out of every mosque in Britain, because he is obviously a psychopathic madman, he remained "unchecked by the authorities five months after a law was passed making it a criminal offense to glorify terrorism," according to the Times Online. Obviously, this is the case because Abu is a patsy-in-waiting, on hold for the next fake terrorist attack, or rather spoiled terrorist attack, that is to say made-up nonsense.

In the lead-up to the raid on the Jameah Islamiyah school at Mark Cross, Crowborough, Sussex, Abdullah was arrested "moments after leaving a Chinese restaurant in Borough. His brother Musa Ahmet is also reported to have been detained," reports the Daily Mail.

Now the British establishment, chomping at the bit to rationalize their recently imposed anti-terrorism laws, already coming under fire for "serious human rights abuses," according to Amnesty International, have their man, a prefect patsy, one who can be splashed all over the corporate media as a fine example of the sort of Muslim terrorist swarming over the United Kingdom, ready to unleash murder and mayhem.

Officials warned that the illicit trade is undermining the Afghan government, which is under attack by Islamic militants that a U.S.-led offensive helped drive from power in late 2001 for harboring Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda bases.

"The news is very bad. On the opium front today in some of the provinces of Afghanistan, we face a state of emergency," Antonio Maria Costa, chief of the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, said at a news conference. "In the southern provinces, the situation is out of control."

He talked with reporters after presenting results of the U.N. survey to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, who voiced "disappointment" over the figures. "Our efforts to fight narcotics have proved inadequate," Karzai said in a statement.

With the economy struggling, there are not enough jobs and many Afghans say they have to grow opium poppies to feed their families. The trade already accounts for at least 35 percent of Afghanistan's economy, financing warlords and insurgents.

The top U.S. narcotics official here said the opium trade is a threat to the country's fledgling democracy.

"This country could be taken down by this whole drugs problem," Doug Wankel told reporters. "We have seen what can come from Afghanistan, if you go back to 9/11. Obviously the U.S. does not want to see that again."

The bulk of the opium increase was in lawless Helmand province, where cultivation rose 162 percent and accounted for 42 percent of the Afghan crop. The province has been wracked by the surge in attacks by Taliban-led militants that has produced the worst fighting in five years.

Opium-growing increased despite the injection of hundreds of millions of dollars in foreign aid to fight the drug over the past two years. Costa criticized the international effort and said foreign aid was "plagued by huge overhead costs" in its administration.

Costa said Afghanistan's insecurity is fueling the opium boom, saying he has pleaded with the NATO force that took over military operations in the south a month ago to take a "stronger role" in fighting drugs. NATO says it has no mandate for direct involvement in the anti-drug campaign.

"We need much stronger, forceful measures to improve security or otherwise I'm afraid we are going to face a dramatic situation of failed regions, districts and even perhaps even provinces in the near future," Costa said.

The U.N. report, based on satellite imagery and ground surveys, said the area under poppy cultivation in Afghanistan reached 407,700 acres in 2006, up from 257,000 acres in 2005. The previous high was 323,700 acres in 2004.

The estimated yield of 6,100 tons of opium resin -- described by Costa as "staggering" -- is up from 4,100 tons last year, and exceeds the previous high for total global output of 5,764 tons recorded in 1999.

Last year, about 450 tons of heroin was consumed worldwide, 90 percent of it from Afghanistan, according to the U.N.

The report will increase pressure on the beleaguered Afghan president. Karzai has often talked tough on drugs, even declaring a "holy war" against the trade, but he is increasingly criticized for appointing and failing to sack corrupt provincial governors and police.

Costa urged the arrest of "serious drug traffickers" to fill a new high-security wing for narcotics convicts at Kabul's Policharki prison. "It has 100 beds. We want these beds to be taken up in the next few months," he said.

At the same news conference, the Afghan counternarcotics minister, Habibullah Qaderi, said the government had the will to make arrests, but lacked the capacity to gather evidence to prosecute "the big fish."

Yet he maintained that with its newly unveiled national anti-drugs strategy, Afghanistan could "control" drug production within five years.

Costa was less upbeat. "It's going to take possibly 20 years to get rid of the problem," he said, citing the experience of former opium producers like Thailand, Turkey and Pakistan.

In an indication of the alarming extent of official complicity in the trade, a Western counternarcotics official said about 25,000 to 30,000 acres of government land in Helmand was used to cultivate opium poppies this year.

The official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitivity of the issue, said police and government officials are involved in cultivating poppies, providing protection for growers or taking bribes to ensure the crops aren't destroyed.

He said the Taliban -- which managed to nearly eradicate Afghanistan's poppy crop in 2001, just before their ouster for giving refuge to Osama bin Laden -- now profit from the trade.

In some instances, drug traffickers have provided vehicles and money to the Taliban to carry out terrorist attacks, he said. But he added that the ties seem to be local and that there is no evidence of coordination between drug lords and the Taliban leadership.