With scores of people being killed each day by suicide bombers and partisan militias, the UN chief said it was "heartbreaking" that "the everyday life of Iraqi people is dominated by the constant threat of sectarian violence and civil strife."

Annan said Iraq, which was invaded by a US-led force in 2003, had made "important progress" in the past two years with two national elections, a constitutional referendum and a constitutional process.

He said that if Iraqi leaders "can address the needs and common interests of all Iraqis, the promise of peace and prosperity is still within reach".

"But if current patterns of alienation and violence persist much longer, there is a grave danger that the Iraqi state will break down, possibly in the midst of full-scale civil war," he said.

US leaders have denied that there is a civil war in Iraq despite the scope of the violence.

Annan said however action must be taken in Baghdad and internationally to "bring Iraq back from the brink".

The UN chief called on Iraq's leaders to make stronger efforts to "defuse rising sectarian tensions" on top of a national reconciliation plan launched by Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki.

Annan backed an Arab League proposal to hold a national conference in Baghdad to discuss issues such as federalism and the sharing of revenues.

"Many of Iraq's neighbours have legitimate concerns about instability inside that country. Iraq must remain sensitive to these apprehensions. The neighbours, for their part, must also be responsive to Iraqi security needs," he said.

A meeting in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia of interior ministers from Iraq and seven other Middle East countries brought a promise to step up efforts to stem the flow of foreign fighters into Iraq.

The six Arab states plus Iran and Turkey undertook to "put more effort towards taking necessary measures in guarding and controlling the borders and ports to combat smuggling and infiltration of terrorists from and into Iraq and prevent using forged travel documents."

At the UN meeting, Iraq's president said that a national compact drawn up by the government in Baghdad would provide major change in Iraq over the next five years.

Talabani said the government was determined to create "efficient and accountable security forces" and committed to "strengthening the rule of law and human rights protections".

He said: "Our security plan is the plan of a democracy, not the plan of a tyrant."

The Iraqi government was "reviewing legislation that controls the possession of weapons." Moves to disband and demobilize militia were also called "a priority" by the president.

"The government recognizes that the infiltration of the security ministries by criminal elements and members of terrorist groups represents a major challenge," said Talabani.

"Ramadi, the capital of al-Anbar province, is still living with the daily terror of its people getting killed by snipers and its infrastructure being destroyed," Ahmad, a local doctor who withheld his last name for security purposes told IPS. "This city has been facing the worst of the American terror and destruction for more than two years now, and the world is silent."

Destroying infrastructure and cutting water and electricity "for days and even weeks is routine reaction to the resistance," he said. "Guys of the resistance do not need water and electricity, it's the families that are being harmed, and their lives which are at stake."

Students and professors at the University of al-Anbar told IPS that their campus is under frequent attack.

"Nearly every week we face raids by the Americans or their Iraqi colleagues," a professor speaking on condition of anonymity told IPS. Students said that U.S. troops occupied their school last week..

"We've been under great pressure from the Americans since the very first days of their occupation of Iraq," a student told IPS.

Such raids are being reported all over Ramadi. "The infrastructure destruction is huge around the governorate building in downtown Ramadi," said a 24-year-old student who gave his name as Ali al-Ani. "And they are destroying the market too."

IPS reported Sep. 5 that the U.S. military was bulldozing entire blocks of buildings near the governorate to dampen resistance attacks on government offices.

Such U.S. action seems most severe in al-Anabar province, where resistance is strongest, and which has seen the highest U.S. casualties.

The city of Hit 80km west of Ramadi was surrounded by U.S. troops for several days earlier this week. Several civilians were killed and at least five were detained by U.S. forces. Checkpoints are in place at each entrance to the city after the U.S. military lifted the cordon around it. This has stifled movement and damaged local businesses.

"There was an attack on a U.S. convoy, and three vehicles were destroyed," a local tribal chief who gave his name as Nawaf told IPS. "It wasn't the civilians who did it, but they are the ones punished. These Americans have the bad habit of cutting all of the essential services after every attack. They said they came to liberate us, but look at the slow death they are giving us every day."

In Haditha, a city of 75,000 on the banks of the Euphrates River in western al-Anbar, collective punishment is ongoing, residents say. This was the site of the massacre of 24 civilians by U.S. marines in November 2005.

"The Americans continue to raid our houses and threaten us with more violence," a local tribal leader who gave his name as Abu Juma'a told IPS. "But if they think they will make us kneel by these criminal acts, they are wrong. If they increase the pressure, the resistance will increase the reaction. We see this pattern repeated so often now."

Abu Juma'a added: "I pray that the Americans return to their senses before they lose everything in the Iraqi fire."

In Fallujah, local police say residents have turned against them due to the collective punishment tactics used by U.S. forces.

"The Americans started pushing us to fight the resistance despite our contracts that clearly assigned us the duties of civil protection against normal crimes such as theft and tribal quarrels," a police lieutenant told IPS. "Now 90 percent of the force has decided to quit rather than kill our brothers or get killed by them for the wishes of the Americans."

At least one U.S. vehicle is reported destroyed every day on average in the face of mounting U.S. raids and a daily curfew. The scene is one of destruction of the city, not rebuilding.

"Infrastructure rebuilding is just a joke that nobody laughs at," Fayiq al-Dilaimy, an engineer in Fallujah told IPS. He was on the rebuilding committee set up after the November 2004 U.S.-led operation which destroyed approximately 75 percent of the city..

"People of this city could rebuild their city in six months if given a real chance. Now look at it and how sorrowful it looks under the boots of the 'liberators'."

Many of the smaller towns have been badly hit. "Khaldiyah (near Fallujah) and the area around it have faced the worst collective punishments for over two years now," said a government official in Ramadi. "But of course most cities in al-Anbar are being constantly punished by the Americans."

Samarra and Dhululiyah towns, both north of Baghdad, have also been facing collective punishment from the U.S. military, according to residents.

"Curfews and concrete walls are permanent in both cities, which makes life impossible," Ali al-Bazi, a lawyer who lives in Dhululiyah and works in Samarra told IPS. "There are so many killings by American snipers. So many families have lost loved ones trying to visit relatives or even just stepping outside of their house."

While Baghdad is not in al-Anbar province, occupation forces have used similar tactics there. In January 2005 IPS reported that the military used bulldozers to level palm groves, cut electricity, destroy a fuel station and block access roads in response to attacks from resistance fighters.

A U.S. military spokesman in Baghdad did not comment on specific cases, but told IPS that the U.S. military "does its best to protect civilians from the terrorists."

Her gratitude to the forces that freed her is apparent throughout the book, as is her ambivalence about her captors. Although she never yields to their rationale for kidnapping her, she does acknowledge the tactic as one with some military and political value. Although she never seems to understand fully that all Westerners are potential hostages merely because of their nations of origin, Sgrena admits that her kidnapping was important in that it provided the Iraqi resistance with a forum to express their opposition to their nation's occupation. In addition, the response to the kidnapping in Italy provided Italians and other non-Iraqis opposed to the occupation a means to express their opposition while supporting the release of the hostages. This was best expressed in the slogan Free Iraq! Free Giuliani! that appeared in rallies across Italy. With this statement, any pro-occupation sentiment in the movement to free Sgrena was effectively sidelined.

Like many other hostage tales, there are moments of true human interaction between the hostage and her captors. Interestingly enough, but not surprisingly, some of these moments occur during various soccer matches that are watched by the kidnappers. Although Sgrena is anything but a sports fan, her Italian nationality gives her credence if only because of one of the kidnappers obsession with Italian soccer. She describes her discussions of religion and non-belief with the mujaheedin holding her and their difficulty in understanding her relationship to her unmarried longtime partner. Unlike other hostage tales, especially the recent story by US journalist taken hostage Jill Carroll, Sgrena refuses to accept the rationale of the occupiers and insists thgoughout the text that it is the occupation that is the primary culprit in Iraq, not the resistance. The descriptions of the aforementioned conversations reminds the reader of the contradictory nature of the human condition--warriors able to hold a woman prisoner yet curious enought of this person from another culture to converse with her and debate, even though their commanders and clerics might not approve.

As regards Sgrena's thoughts on Iraq, it is her contention that the fighters against the occupiers are primarily composed of two elements: the nationalist insurgency and the jihadists. Sgrena states that the jihadists want the US in Iraq because it gives them a front in their war on the infidels, while the insurgency wants the US and other occupation troops out so they can get on with their lives. As I write this review, the news broadcasts are reporting on a demonstration of hundreds of thousands against the US occupation of Iraq and the Israeli war on Lebanon in Baghdad. The primary component of this demonstration were Shia Iraqis that support Muqtada al-Sadr. According to the news report, US officials claim to be concerned that this massive show of strength by these Shia Iraqis could provoke attacks on them by members of the Sunni community in Iraq. While there may be some truth to this possibility, the fact that the US command is expressing concern is so transparent as to be laughable. After all, the US military and intelligence have certainly killed more of Sadr's supporters than their fellow Iraqis have. It is more likely that the US is concerned that the solidarity being expressed across religious lines and across the Arab world for the resistance of Hezbollah to Israel's onslaught will become the dominant current in Iraq. If that occurred, the resistance to the occupation would be nearly universal among Iraqis. That would spell the end of not only the occupation, but of the jihadists as well.

Of course, the Pentagon and White House (with approval from Congress) remains convinced that the situation can be remedied in favor of Washington via military means. Indeed, the commander of US Central Command, General Abizaid, went on record in early August stating that he could "imagine" the US military "winning" Baghdad. As Sgrena's book clarifies (once again), this imaginary scenario is nothing more than a pipe dream for the US generals and a nightmare for the Iraqis. As the occupation and its consequent mayhem continue no one is certain what the next phase will look like. The civil strife between various religious trends is but one facet of the aforementioned mayhem. Underlying it all is the continuing dismal state of most Iraqis' economic lives and the lack of any apparent future of peace.

Sgrena's understanding of this desperate situation and Washington's fundamental role in creating and maintaining it are the subject of much of her commentary in the book. It is interspersed with a narrative describing the physical realities of her captivity and her means of dealing with the boredom, fear, and hopelessness that are part of any imprisonment. Her journalistic abilities are quite apparent in these descriptions--one feels that they know the characteristics of the room she spent her captivity almost as well if they had seen a walk-through video of it. Her discussion of the emotions she experienced are interwoven into her story in such a way that they become like the darkness of her mask that the kidnappers insist she wear at times of their choosing. Or the daylight that we assume will always be. They exist but they do not overwhelm. In fact, that is how Sgrena tells her story. Perhaps it is her journalistic detachment or perhaps it is the only manner in which she could write it down. No matter what the reason may be, it works. Friendly Fire is more than the tale of one hostage's ordeal and it is more than just another tract on the US-created debacle that is Iraq. It is not a cry for revenge, but a tempered statement on a nation's shattered psyche and an individual attempt to share a perspective influenced by her unforeseen role in that nation's history.

Ron Jacobs is author of The Way the Wind Blew: a history of the Weather Underground, which is just republished by Verso. Jacobs' essay on Big Bill Broonzy is featured in CounterPunch's new collection on music, art and sex, Serpents in the Garden. He can be reached at: rjacobs3625@charter.net

About 150 people were hurt in overnight riots that Prime Minister Ferenc Gyurcsany, called "the longest and darkest night" for the country since the end of communism in 1989.

Several thousand police reinforcements were called to the capital from across the country. Police drove protesters out of the TV building at about 3 a.m., more than five hours after the unrest began.

The injured included 102 police officers, one of whom was described on state television as being in satisfactory condition after an operation to remove a bone splinter from his skull.

Gyurcsany, who said police had been taken by surprise, refused to resign, as protesters had demanded.

The violence followed a mainly peaceful protest outside parliament by several thousand people that began late Sunday, when local media played a leaked recording made in May of Gyurcsany admitting to repeatedly lying to the country about the state of the Hungarian economy in order to win April elections.

The Socialist prime minister has not denied making the statements. He said the government must restore order.

"The street is not a solution, but instead causes conflict and crisis," the prime minister told MTI, the state news service, early Tuesday. "Our job is to resolve the conflict and prevent a crisis."

Socialist members of parliament voted unanimously to support him and the government called for an emergency session of the cabinet for Tuesday morning.

The tape was made at a closed-door meeting in late May, weeks after Gyurcsany's government became the first in post-communist Hungary to win re-election.

It seemed to confirm the worst accusations levelled at him by the centre-right opposition during the campaign - that Hungary's state budget was on the verge of collapse and that Gyurcsany and his ministers were concealing the truth to secure victory.

Adding spice to the scandal, Gyurcsany's comments were full of crude remarks and called into doubt the abilities of some of Hungary's most respected economic experts.

"We screwed up. Not a little, a lot," Gyurcsany was heard saying. "No European country has done something as boneheaded as we have."

The prime minister also told colleagues the government needed to end its duplicitous ways.

"I almost died when for a year and a half we had to pretend we were governing. Instead, we lied morning, evening and night. I don't want to do this anymore," he told his fellow Socialists.

The 45-year-old Gyurcsany, his party's golden boy since he was elected prime minister in late 2002, said the economy had been kept afloat only through "divine providence, the abundance of cash in the world economy and hundreds of tricks."

Confronted with initial excerpts of the 25-minute recording, which Hungarian state radio posted on its website Sunday, Gyurcsany not only acknowledged their authenticity but seemed relieved they had been made public - leading to speculation that the leak came from sources close to him.

"It deflates pent-up tensions regarding the reforms and ... can be used to support the government's position that they are urgent and inevitable," said political analyst Zoltan Kiszelly.

Others said the leak was an attempt - which may have misfired - by Gyurcsany's Socialist rivals to block his aspirations to become party chairman.

"In the long term, I think Gyurcsany's words will have a stabilizing, cathartic effect, both politically and economically," said political commentator Laszlo Seres. "At least to his own voters, Gyurcsany can argue that he shouldn't be punished for his sincerity - that he said these things to stop the lies."

Gyurcsany appeared on two live television shows Sunday night, trying to turn the focus of the debate away from his government and into a wider discussion about the failings of Hungary's political elite since the 1990 end of communism.

He also defended his foul language, saying it had been used in the context of a meeting of friends and colleagues and that he was proud of his "passionate speech."

"The real issue in Hungarian politics today is not who lied and when, but who is able to put an end to this ... who can face up to the lies and half-truths of the past 16 years," Gyurcsany wrote in a Sunday night entry of his blog, introducing a lengthy transcript of his May speech.

"The lies are the sins of the whole Hungarian political elite."

But on Monday the political mood was against Gyurcsany. Opposition parties demanded his resignation, while President Laszlo Solyom chastised the prime minister for "knowingly" jeopardizing people's faith in democracy and asked Gyurcsany to publicly recognize his error.

"Naturally, this disturbed me," Kaczynski said about the decision on Monday.

"Our whole plan of stabilization of the area southeast of Poland was based on Ukraine's admission to NATO as soon as possible," he said in an interview with The Associated Press in New York ahead of this week's U.N. summit.

He described NATO as an "exporter of peace and stabilization."

Poland, a NATO member since 1999, has been advocating a quick entry of Ukraine.

"There is no particular lack of stability there, nevertheless it would be good if it were in NATO," Kaczynski said.

Last week, Ukraine's new prime minister, Viktor Yanukovych, told NATO that he was putting moves toward membership in the alliance on hold, but he said the former Soviet Republic still wanted to join the European Union.