Maliki called on some 1,700 academics and civil rights activists gathered for a conference in the capital to back his efforts to stem the fighting through a national reconcilation plan.

"We should keep aside our differences to build bridges, and Iraq's civil society should work to implement a policy of concord," Maliki urged the audience in Baghdad's heavily fortified Green Zone -- the seat of the Iraqi government and the US military headquarters.

He said the meeting was part of his national reconciliation plan aimed at restoring security and the only way to "defy terror."

"Reconciliation is the only thorough and sound way of thinking, and offers a high sense of responsibility. He who has no such characteristics must keep away from the process."

Civil society groups, he added, held the "responsibility to end sectarianism and racism. They are responsible for spreading freedom and democracy."

Maliki's comments were greeted by a call from the audience of: "Yes, yes to Iraq. No, no to terror."

Iraq's junior minister for civil society, Adel al-Asaadi, said the government's peace plan "was a valuable opportunity and should not be missed."

Many of the participants vowed to support peace.

"We raise our voice and urge rival parties to stop the fighting and create an atmosphere void of terror," said Ibtisam Abdel Razzak of the Iraqi Women's Federation.

The meeting marked Maliki's second major attempt to reach out to influential sectors of society for support for the plan he launched earlier this year.

Last month, he met hundreds of tribal leaders who later signed a pact of honour to end sectarian violence.

But since that meeting, communal bloodletting has surged in Baghdad with hundreds of people killed and their bullet-riddled bodies dumped on the streets.

In an effort to rein in the violence which has raged alongside persistent anti-US attacks by Sunni Arab insurgents, the United States military said it will divert some of the 30,000 troops in the restive Al-Anbar province to Baghdad.

"The main effort is Baghdad. And we must ensure that we weight the main effort," Lieutenant General Peter Chiarelli told reporters late Friday.

Without giving actual numbers, Chiarelli -- the number two US commander in Iraq -- said the shift of troops will not affect operations in Anbar, where the military faces a stiff challenge from Sunni rebels and terror group Al-Qaeda.

Iraqi authorities, meanwhile, are planning to dig trenches around the capital to thwart the movement of rebels and death squads.

"We will surround the city with trenches," interior ministry spokesman Brigadier General Abdel Karim Khalaf told AFP on Friday.

"Entry to the capital will be permitted through 28 roads as against 21 at the moment, but at the same time we will seal off dozens of other minor roads with access to Baghdad."

In rebel violence Saturday, a trio of bombs killed three people and wounded dozens in Baghdad.

Two Iraqi soldiers were killed and two policemen wounded when a booby-trapped car was blown up as security forces arrived to remove a body placed inside the vehicle, a security official said.

In another attack, a suicide bomber blew up a vehicle, killing one civilian and wounding 22.

Three people, including two policemen, were killed in the restive city of Baquba, northeast of Baghdad, while a civilian was killed each in the northern city of Mosul and in the southern town of Karbala.

The US military also announced the death of a soldier, taking its losses in Iraq since the March 2003 invasion to 2,678, according to an AFP count based on Pentagon figures.

So far this month, the US military has already lost 27 servicemen in Iraq.

The bomber detonated his truck in front of a police investigation centre in Kirkuk -- a city claimed by both the Arabs and the Kurds - at 10:24 am (0624 GMT) Sunday.

Many of the wounded were police officers, including the head of the investigation centre. The wounded also included six women and two children.

"He drove towards the centre, firing the gun with one hand randomly to push back civilians, and then detonated the truck in front of the centre," a Kirkuk police officer said.

Approximately half an hour later, a bomb exploded in front of the Mahaba wa Tasamah (Love and Forgiveness) foundation, killing one woman and wounding four others.

The organization had closed its doors a week earlier after receiving threats from the Al-Qaeda-linked Ansar al-Sunna organization. The building was owned by a local tribal sheikh who had recently called for Saddam Hussein's release and reinstatement.

A second car bomb exploded outside the offices of a private security company, killing two people and wounding another three.

As US forces arrived at the blast site and surrounded the company's offices, a suicide car bomber detonated his vehicle nearby, killing three civilians and wounding six, police captain Rafed Abdel Hussain told AFP.

Two roadside bombs targeting a police patrol in the city also exploded within five minutes of each other, killing a civilian and wounding 12.

Kirkuk, a fragile ethnic mix of Kurds, Arabs and Turkmen, has long been a flashpoint in Iraq, especially with the potential revenues from the massive -- and largely unexploited -- oil reserves beneath the city.

Until recently, violence between the communities was kept to a minimum, partly due to political institutions, including a strong provincial council. But in the past few months there has been a sharp increase in the number of explosions and car bombs.

US forces in the area attributed the bombing campaign to groups with links to Al-Qaeda seeking to spark civil conflict.

Hussein, 35, is a native of Fallujah who began work for the AP in September 2004. He photographed events in Fallujah and Ramadi until he was detained on April 12 of this year.

"We want the rule of law to prevail. He either needs to be charged or released. Indefinite detention is not acceptable," said Tom Curley, AP's president and chief executive officer. "We've come to the conclusion that this is unacceptable under Iraqi law, or Geneva Conventions, or any military procedure."

Hussein is one of an estimated 14,000 people detained by the U.S. military worldwide - 13,000 of them in Iraq. They are held in limbo where few are ever charged with a specific crime or given a chance before any court or tribunal to argue for their freedom.

In Hussein's case, the military has not provided any concrete evidence to back up the vague allegations they have raised about him, Curley and other AP executives said.

The military said Hussein was captured with two insurgents, including Hamid Hamad Motib, an alleged leader of al-Qaida in Iraq. "He has close relationships with persons known to be responsible for kidnappings, smuggling, improvised explosive device (IED) attacks and other attacks on coalition forces," according to a May 7 e-mail from U.S. Army Maj. Gen. Jack Gardner, who oversees all coalition detainees in Iraq.

"The information available establishes that he has relationships with insurgents and is afforded access to insurgent activities outside the normal scope afforded to journalists conducting legitimate activities," Gardner wrote to AP International Editor John Daniszewski.

Hussein proclaims his innocence, according to his Iraqi lawyer, Badie Arief Izzat, and believes he has been unfairly targeted because his photos from Ramadi and Fallujah were deemed unwelcome by the coalition forces.

That Hussein was captured at the same time as insurgents doesn't make him one of them, said Kathleen Carroll, AP's executive editor.

"Journalists have always had relationships with people that others might find unsavory," she said. "We're not in this to choose sides, we're to report what's going on from all sides."

AP executives in New York and Baghdad have sought to persuade U.S. officials to provide additional information about allegations against Hussein and to have his case transferred to the Iraqi criminal justice system. The AP contacted military leaders in Iraq and the Pentagon, and later the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, Zalmay Khalilzad.

The AP has worked quietly until now, believing that would be the best approach. But with the U.S. military giving no indication it would change its stance, the news cooperative has decided to make public Hussein's imprisonment, hoping the spotlight will bring attention to his case and that of thousands of others now held in Iraq, Curley said.

One of Hussein's photos was part of a package of 20 photographs that won a Pulitzer Prize for breaking news photography last year. His contribution was an image of four insurgents in Fallujah firing a mortar and small arms during the U.S.-led offensive in the city in November 2004.

In what several AP editors described as a typical path for locally hired staff in the midst of a conflict, Hussein, a shopkeeper who sold cell phones and computers in Fallujah, was hired in the city as a general helper because of his local knowledge.

As the situation in Fallujah eroded in 2004, he expressed a desire to become a photographer. Hussein was given training and camera equipment and hired in September of that year as a freelancer, paid on a per-picture basis, according to Santiago Lyon, AP's director of photography. A month later, he was put on a monthly retainer.

During the U.S.-led offensive in Fallujah in November 2004, he stayed on after his family fled. "He had good access. He was able to photograph not only the results of the attacks on Fallujah, he was also able to photograph members of the insurgency on occasion," Lyon said. "That was very difficult to achieve at that time."

After fleeing later in the offensive, leaving his camera behind in the rush to escape, Hussein arrived in Baghdad, where the AP gave him a new camera. He then went to work in Ramadi which, like Fallujah, has been a center of insurgent violence.

In its own effort to determine whether Hussein had gotten too close the insurgency, the AP has reviewed his work record, interviewed senior photo editors who worked on his images and examined all 420 photographs in the news cooperative's archives that were taken by Hussein, Lyon said.

The military in Iraq has frequently detained journalists who arrive quickly at scenes of violence, accusing them of getting advance notice from insurgents, Lyon said. But "that's just good journalism. Getting to the event quickly is something that characterizes good journalism anywhere in the world. It does not indicate prior knowledge," he said.

Out of Hussein's body of work, only 37 photos show insurgents or people who could be insurgents, Lyon said. "The vast majority of the 420 images show the aftermath or the results of the conflict - blown up houses, wounded people, dead people, street scenes," he said.

Only four photos show the wreckage of still-burning U.S. military vehicles.

"Do we know absolutely everything about him, and what he did before he joined us? No. Are we satisfied that what he did since he joined us was appropriate for the level of work we expected from him? Yes," Lyon said. "When we reviewed the work he submitted to us, we found it appropriate to what we'd asked him to do."

The AP does not knowingly hire combatants or anyone who is part of a story, company executives said. But hiring competent local staff in combat areas is vital to the news service, because often only local people can pick their way around the streets with a reasonable degree of safety.

"We want people who are not part of a story. Sometimes it is a judgment call. If someone seems to be thuggish, or like a fighter, you certainly wouldn't hire them," Daniszewski said. After they are hired, their work is checked carefully for signs of bias.

Lyon said every image from local photographers is always "thoroughly checked and vetted" by experienced editors. "In every case where there have been images of insurgents, questions have been asked about circumstances under which the image was taken, and what the image shows," he said.

Executives said it's not uncommon for AP news people to be picked up by coalition forces and detained for hours, days or occasionally weeks, but never this long. Several hundred journalists in Iraq have been detained, some briefly and some for several weeks, according to Scott Horton, a New York-based lawyer hired by the AP to work on Hussein's case.

Horton also worked on behalf of an Iraqi cameraman employed by CBS, Abdul Ameer Younis Hussein, who was detained for one year before his case was sent to an Iraqi court on charges of insurgent activity. He was acquitted for lack of evidence.

AP officials emphasized the military has not provided the company concrete evidence of its claims against Bilal Hussein, or provided him a chance to offer a defense.

"He's a Sunni Arab from a tribe in that area. I'm sure he does know some nasty people. But is he a participant in the insurgency? I don't think that's been proven," Daniszewski said.

Information provided to the AP by the military to support the continued detention hasn't withstood scrutiny, when it could be checked, Daniszewski said.

For example, he said, the AP had been told that Hussein was involved with the kidnapping of two Arab journalists in Ramadi.

But those journalists, tracked down by the AP, said Hussein had helped them after they were released by their captors without money or a vehicle in a dangerous part of Ramadi. After a journalist acquaintance put them in touch with Hussein, the photographer picked them up, gave them shelter and helped get them out of town, they said.

The journalists said they had never been contacted by multinational forces for their account.

Horton said the military has provided contradictory accounts of whether Hussein himself was a U.S. target last April or if he was caught up in a broader sweep.

The military said bomb-making materials were found in the apartment where Hussein was captured but it never detailed what those materials were. The military said he tested positive for traces of explosives. Horton said that was virtually guaranteed for anyone on the streets of Ramadi at that time.

Hussein has been a frequent target of conservative critics on the Internet, who raised questions about his images months before the military detained him. One blogger and author, Michelle Malkin, wrote about Hussein's detention on the day of his arrest, saying she'd been tipped by a military source.

Carroll said the role of journalists can be misconstrued and make them a target of critics. But that criticism is misplaced, she said.

"How can you know what a conflict is like if you're only with one side of the combatants?" she said. "Journalism doesn't work if we don't report and photograph all sides."

Butler, commander of 16 Air Assault Brigade, took full responsibility for setting up the "platoon houses" at Sangin and Musa Qala, where 15 British soldiers have died. But he said the decision to send troops into the frontline bases, described by many of his men as "hellholes", was made "under not inconsiderable pressure" from Hamid Karzai, Afghanistan's president.

When British troops began arriving in April to take charge of Helmand province, they met immediate Taliban resistance, Butler said. Baghran district centre had been overrun by the Taliban.

"The governor [of Helmand] was concerned, and the Afghan government was concerned, that northern Helmand was about to fall to the Taliban," said Butler.

British troops had shown immense bravery in intense combat. "They have been in almost constant engagement with the enemy. Some of these guys are barely out of school. Killing someone is a very difficult thing to do," Butler said. "People think: 'Well, that's what soldiers are paid to do', but it still takes raw courage to go out and do it."

The Kurds' grip on Kirkuk was strengthened after the invasion of Iraq, and the two main Kurdish political parties led by Masoud Barazani, the president of the Kurdistan region, and Jalal Talabani, the Iraqi president, became the main powerbrokers in the city. Now their ambition to annex the city to their intended state has become public and bold.

A referendum is to be held in late 2007 to decide the city's fate. But Arabs and Turkmen say the Kurds are using their political new power and the support of the US to manipulate it.

The situation has provoked Kirkuk's non-Kurdish communities and plunged the city into a fierce war.

Attacks on Kurdish targets reached their peak last month when a shrine owned by Talabani's family was attacked on August 27. On the same day, a car bomber blew himself up near the office of Talabani's Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in Kirkuk.

Deteriorating situation

Najati Qalaji, secretary-general of the London-based civil rights group the Committee for Defending the Turkmen Rights, expressed serious concerns at the deteriorating situation in Kirkuk.

"Kurds are slowly but surely occupying Kirkuk, everything is for them now, jobs, privileges and power," he said.

Qalaji accused the Kurds of following Saddam's practices.

"Saddam wanted to Arabise Kirkuk and exchanged its Kurdish minority with ethnic Arabs, and the Kurds now are doing the same by scaring people away and bringing in their fellow Kurds in their tens of thousands.

"I do not think there is a need for the referendum because, according to what they are doing now, the result will definitely be 100% in favour of annexing Kirkuk to Kurdistan."

Influx

Kurdish parties say the Kurds who have flooded Kirkuk since 2003, many now sleeping rough in public buildings, are those who were thrown out of the city during the Saddam era.

However, the Turkmen say Saddam removed no more than 500 families and that they had ties with the then Kurdish insurgents. Saddam's plan was to prevent them from aiding the insurgency.

"One question I would like to raise here; We know that Kurds who were kicked out by Saddam returned after the invasion and took back their houses by force. So, if those tens of thousands of Kurds who have been sleeping in stadiums and former public buildings were really kicked out of Kirkuk by Saddam, then where are their houses? Why do they not own anything in Kirkuk not even their old identities?" Qalaji said.

Non-Kurdish powers in the city reject the Kurdish plan to launch a referendum in late 2007 and say it is just another bid to break Iraq apart and warned they would resist the Kurdish plan.

Counter act

Leaflets warning inhabitants not to join the army or security forces were distributed in the city last week. The leaflets also urged those serving in the army and security forces to abandon their jobs, or get killed.

Policemen and army officers have suffered countless attacks during the past months.

One Arab activist in Kirkuk, who wanted to be identified as Abu Adnan, said his community is working closely with the Turkmen to prevent the "hijacking of Kirkuk".

"Kurds were never a majority in Kirkuk and the city was never Kurdish, they always shared it with us [Arabs] and our brothers the Turkmen, who always constituted half or two-thirds of the city's population.

"We also should not forget the city's Chaldeans and Assyrians. Kirkuk is a small Iraq, where the country's diversity is demonstrated, no party should get hold of it, it is just an Iraqi city.

"I would like to say that the referendum will be fiercely resisted, we will do everything we can to prevent the hijacking of Kirkuk," he said.

Public wrath

Joost Hiltermann, director of Crisis Group's Middle East Project, said: "For the Kurds, this deadline could be a self-laid trap. Having raised expectations, Kurdish leaders must now deliver by the end of 2007 or meet public wrath [among Kurds]".

The group issued a report last month urging an international action to prevent Kirkuk from turning into a scene of savage civil war.

In 1959, Kurdish communists took advantage of the support of Abd al-Karim Qassim, then Iraq's ruler, and massacred Kirkuk's Turkmen elite.

Sami Abd al-Hamid, an Iraqi communist leader, said the massacre has been wrongly blamed on the communists.

"It is true that those who performed the killing were communist Kurds, but they acted as Kurds not as communists, they were absolutely ethnic Kurds killing their rival Turkmen," he said.

In 1991, Kurdish rebels seized Kirkuk after the Iraqi army's chaotic withdrawal from Kuwait, which caused a short power vacuum in Iraq.

Kurdish gunmen launched an organised killing campaign against Kirkuk's Arab and Turkmen inhabitants. Iraqi Republican Guards regained the city from Kurdish rebels shortly afterwards.

Sen. Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) and two GOP colleagues on the committee disclosed this information for the first time in the panel's report on Iraq released last week. They wrote in the "additional views" section of the report that the Cabinet-level Iraqi official "said that Iraq has no past, current, or anticipated future contact with Osama bin Laden and al Qaeda" and that the official "added that bin Laden was in fact a longtime enemy of Iraq."

On Sept. 25, 2002, just days after the CIA received the source's information, President Bush told reporters: "Al-Qaeda hides. Saddam doesn't, but the danger is, is that they work in concert. The danger is, is that al-Qaeda becomes an extension of Saddam's madness and his hatred and his capacity to extend weapons of mass destruction around the world. . . . [Y]ou can't distinguish between al-Qaeda and Saddam when you talk about the war on terror."

According to the three Republicans, the CIA said it did not disseminate the intelligence about the lack of a Hussein-bin Laden connection because "it did not provide anything new."

But other information obtained at the same time from the same source that paralleled what administration officials were saying was immediately passed on to "alert" the president and other senior policymakers, the three Republicans said. A "highly restricted intelligence report" conveyed the source's claim that although Iraq had no nuclear weapon, Hussein was covertly developing one and had stockpiled chemical weapons, according to the committee members.

CIA spokesman Paul Gimigliano said he could not provide additional information about the situation beyond what is in the Senate report, but he added that "the agency's decisions to disseminate intelligence are not guided by political considerations."

Committee staff members would not expand on the report's language other than to say the Hussein-bin Laden material was maintained within the CIA at a high level with limited access.

Former senior CIA officials said it was unclear what happened to the Hussein-bin Laden information, although two former aides to then-CIA Director George J. Tenet said they could not remember if they received the original information. "Nothing was withheld from the White House," one former aide said, although there was "a lot of debate inside the agency about the Saddam-al-Qaeda relationship" because it was the focus of repeated questions from administration officials, including Vice President Cheney and his then-chief of staff, I. Lewis "Scooter" Libby.

The high-level Iraqi official, who was not identified in the Senate report, was Naji Sabri, then foreign minister. A senior CIA officer, after months of trying, was able to question him through a trusted agency intermediary when Sabri was in New York City around Sept. 19, 2002.

According to former intelligence officials, the CIA case officer filed two separate reports describing his questioning of Sabri. One, involving the Iraq weapons program, would go to analysts interested in that subject, the officer believed; the second, about Hussein and bin Laden, would go to the CIA counterterrorism center. The officer, however, passed his material on to senior agency officials in New York and was not aware of how it was eventually distributed.

Sabri's role as an intelligence source for the CIA has already been publicly reported. New details, including a payment of $200,000 to the intermediary and a secret signal system to assure the CIA officer that Sabri was cooperating, are contained in the recently released book "Hubris," by Michael Isikoff of Newsweek and David Corn, Washington correspondent for the magazine the Nation.

Well, they stop short of actually calling it that, but they might as well with the absolute nonsense that is on the "Ten Facts About Guantanamo" list that was issued earlier in the week (word document at the top of the web site).

Is it me, or have things now just flown past obscene and vile and disgusting and shameful and disgraceful to bizarre and pathetic? Because when you see the items on this list, including (get this) high top sneakers, denim jean jackets, blue jeans and ping pong.

I swear, I kid you not.

Now, I must give a hat tip to the good folks at ThinkProgress for pointing out the lunacy. But in reality, I just don't know how to react to this, so I think that snark is the best answer here - not to minimize the fact that Gitmo is a symbol of the torture and complete disrespect for the Constitution, or that there are numerous detainees who have committed suicide while there, or have been released with no charges brought - but I just can't believe that this is something that anyone actually took the time to write, and then have approved for release by higher-ups at the Pentagon.

I'll provide the points on this list, just because I wouldn't have believed it unless I read them for myself, and you will see just how stupid, pathetic and just flat out wrong (no surprise there) these items are:

1. The detainees at the Guantanamo Bay detention facility include bin Laden's bodyguards, bomb makers, terrorist trainers and facilitators, and other suspected terrorists.

2. More money is spent on meals for detainees than on the U.S. troops stationed there. Detainees are offered up to 4,200 calories a day. The average weight gain per detainee is 20 pounds.

3. The Muslim call to prayer sounds five times a day. Arrows point detainees toward the holy city of Mecca.

4. Detainees receive medical, dental, psychiatric, and optometric care at U.S. taxpayers' expense. In 2005, there were 35 teeth cleanings, 91 cavities filled, and 174 pairs of glasses issued.

5. The International Committee of the Red Cross visits detainees at the facility every few months. More than 20,000 messages between detainees and their families have been exchanged.

6. Recreation activities include basketball, volleyball, soccer, pingpong, and board games. High-top sneakers are provided.

7. Departing detainees receive a Koran, a jean jacket, a white T-shirt, a pair of blue jeans, high-top sneakers, a gym bag of toiletries, and a pillow and blanket for the flight home.

8. Entertainment includes Arabic language TV shows, including World Cup soccer games. The library has 3,500 volumes available in 13 languages -- the most requested book is "Harry Potter."

9. Guantanamo is the most transparent detention facility in the history of warfare. The Joint Task Force has hosted more than 1,000 journalists from more than 40 countries.

10. In 2005, Amnesty International stated that "the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay has become the gulag of our times."

OK, take a moment to stop laughing, crying, shouting or screaming at the computer screen.

Now, correct me if I am wrong, but if these are "the worst of the worst Islamofascists" who only focus on bringing death and destruction to 'Murka - and they are this way because they "hate our freedoms", then please answer these questions:

Why would they be interested in high top sneakers, blue jeans, denim jackets and other "symbols of 'Murka"? Shouldn't we just give them an American flag lapel pin while we are at it?

There are approximately 460 detainees at Guantanamo. Are 35 teeth cleanings in nearly four years something to be bragging about? Are less than 100 fillings something anyone should be impressed with?

Was any of this dental work done after the prisoners were tortured and their teeth were knocked out? Were any of those pairs of glasses issued to people whose faces were kicked in?

Isn't the World Cup on once every four years? Isn't that like saying that the Olympics are broadcast? And wouldn't anyone that is only interested in killing 'Murkins not interested in this?

About that transparency - didn't the military block the media's access entirely? And while the media did have access, didn't the following occur:

Journalists could not talk to detainees, they had to be accompanied by a military escort and their photos were censored.

What about that 4,200 calorie diet? Not to mention the fact that that is more than twice what is a normal diet, didn't we hear about hunger strikes? What about the following little nugget (and I don't mean chicken Mcnugget either):

There also has been a hunger strike since August. The number of inmates refusing food dropped to 18 by last weekend from a high of 131. The military has at times used force-feeding methods, including a restraint chair.

I guess when you force feed people, they gain weight.

What about those Red Cross visits? Well, it is nice to say that they visit often, but what does the Red Cross actually say about the "facilities"?

Christophe Girod - the senior Red Cross official in Washington - said it was unacceptable that the 600 detainees should be held indefinitely at Guantanamo Bay without legal safeguards.

---snip---

Mr Girod said the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) was making the unusually blunt public statement because of a lack of action after previous private contacts with American officials.

"One cannot keep these detainees in this pattern, this situation, indefinitely," he said during a visit to the US naval base where the Taliban and al-Qaeda suspects are being held.

As for the last point, why would any "fun fact" sheet want to point out that Amnesty International called Guantanamo a gulag? Doesn't that seem like something that the Pentagon would want to gloss over?

Just like all of the other facts about Guantanamo, torture, rendition, secret CIA prison camps and well, pretty much everything else that these liars and war criminals have done over the past six years.