General David Petraeus said that the rockets "were Iranian-provided, Iranian-made rockets" and added that Iran's actions were "in complete violation of promises made by President (Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad and the other most senior Iranian leaders to their Iraqi counterparts".

Each of the four attacks on the Green Zone on Sunday, which in total injured at least four people and damaged buildings, sent staff of the US embassy scurrying for the shelter of nearby bunkers, witnesses said.

The attacks in the Green Zone, the seat of the Iraqi government and the US embassy, occurred around 6.30 am (0330 GMT), 10.30 am, 4.30 pm and 8.30 pm, US embassy officials said.

Asked by the BBC whether it would be bad for Iraq if the United States bombed Iran, General Petraeus replied: "That's a question for somebody else, and it's a hypothetical that I never want to discuss".

The fighters loyal to radical cleric Moqtada al-Sadr clashed with police in the villages of Kharnabat and Al-Huwaidar, north of Baquba, the provincial capital, said Lieutenant Colonel Najim al-Sumaidaie from Baquba police.

He said five militants from Sadr's Mahdi Army militia and two policemen were killed in the clashes.

The fighting follows similar clashes between Mahdi Army militiamen and Iraqi police and troops this week in the central Iraqi city of Kut in which at least 19 people were killed.

Sadr has ordered his militiamen to observe a ceasefire he declared late August and renewed on February 22, but admits there are splits in his movement.

Though the young cleric earlier this month announced he would spend more time on his religious studies, his aides have said he remains in overall control of his militia and has not withdrawn from the political scene.

US military commanders refer to Mahdi Army fighters refusing to lay down their arms as "rogue elements", some of whom they say have crossed into Iran for training.

US military spokesman Rear Admiral Gregory Smith on Sunday said the fighting in Kut was localised.

"In most instances these are local groups which are having their differences, which are being dealt with through violence," Smith told a news conference.

"It is limited. It is on a limited scale. The security forces have for the most part dealt with the violence. We do not view it as a widespread issue of concern outside Kut."

In other violence on Sunday, one person was killed when a car bomb in Baghdad's western Mansur neighbourhood targeted a convoy of four-wheel drive vehicles usually used by private security contractors, an interior ministry official said.

State television Al-Iraqiya said the convoy was carrying a group of a private security contractors.

Members of the Shiite Mehdi Army parade down a street in the southern Iraqi town of Basra November 28, 2006. Iraqi police raided strongholds of the Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr's Mehdi Army militia in the southern city of Kut on Wednesday, hunting gunmen who battled with security forces a day earlier.

REUTERS/Atef Hassan

In Kut, 170 km (105 miles) southeast of Baghdad, Mehdi Army gunmen fought Iraqi security forces and U.S. special forces despite Sadr having renewed a six-month ceasefire last month. The cleric issued a statement at the weekend, however, saying they could defend themselves if attacked.

The commander of a quick reaction force in Kut, Lieutenant- Colonel Majid al-Amara, said the fighting was triggered by an attempt to arrest a Mehdi Army leader. He said 14 people were killed, including four gunmen, three children and a policemen.

The U.S. military gave a different account in a statement late on Tuesday. It said special forces had come to the aid of an Iraqi security patrol and come under attack by a large number of "suspected criminal militia fighters".

"The U.S. SF (special forces) returned fire, killing several enemy fighter and destroying two vehicles carrying machineguns," it said, adding a warplane had also destroyed a van suspected of transporting weapons and explosives.

Much of the fighting was reported to have died down by nightfall although sporadic shooting could still be heard.

Mehdi Army fighters have chafed at the extension of the ceasefire, complaining that it leaves them open to attack by U.S. forces and rival Shi'ite factions. The U.S. military says it only targets militiamen who are ignoring the ceasefire.

In separate clashes north of the capital, police said four Iraqi policemen, four gunmen and a civilian were killed in an attack on a security checkpoint in Mosul, which the U.S. military says is al Qaeda's last major urban stronghold in Iraq.

In Dhuluiya, also north of Baghdad, a suicide car bomber killed five people, including three members of a neighborhood security unit, and wounded 14 in an attack on a checkpoint, police Lieutenant-Colonel Ibrahim al-Jubouri said.  Continued...

By Jim Michaels
USA TODAY 

BAGHDAD — U.S. efforts to assist Iraq in building intelligence capabilities have often clashed with Iraq's history of government secrecy and deep-rooted suspicions.

Under Saddam Hussein, Iraq had at least five overlapping national intelligence agencies, some of which spied on one another. Security services interrogated, tortured and killed enemies of Saddam's regime and spied on citizens.

"Their intelligence service … has always been a means of intimidation, not a means of collecting information," said Robert Baer, a former CIA officer who worked in the Middle East.

The U.S. military is attempting to guide Iraq toward a modern intelligence service that gathers and analyzes data, said Dan Maguire, the top U.S. intelligence adviser to Iraq. Agents would have limited powers.

In an effort to create a modern agency, the United States initially backed the Iraqi National Intelligence Service, modeling its structure on that of the CIA. It was even set up with CIA assistance, Maguire said.

Iraq's prime minister, Nouri al-Maliki, has viewed the organization as a CIA creation and has been wary of relying on it. Al-Maliki established a rival intelligence department under Shirwan al-Waili, the minister of state for national security affairs.

"The tension was in … the prime minister feeling comfortable with a homegrown organization vs. one that he viewed … as a U.S.-grown organization," Maguire said.

Al-Maliki's government also has taken action this year to remove Iraq's special forces, which number more than 3,000 elite troops, from Defense Ministry control. He has placed them under a newly formed counterterrorism command.

That move has raised concerns among Iraqis that al-Maliki is trying to tighten control over the commandos and counterterrorism forces, which go after top insurgent and militia leaders. The Iraqi government is dominated by Shiite Arabs, while Saddam's former regime was dominated by Sunni Arabs.

"This looks and smells very much like a Saddam-era structure, where the prime minister has his hand on the throttle and can use it as he sees fit," Maguire said.

"If he decides he wants to go and hit Sunni targets with these guys, he's got a killing machine to go do that," Maguire said. "So there's a fear there."

Maguire said, however, that there is enough "rigor" and "oversight" built into the target-vetting process to make such abuse difficult.

For the past year, the U.S. military has focused on helping Iraq create intelligence departments in the ministries of Interior and Defense. Thousands of analysts and agents have been hired.

Baer said it is difficult to overcome the culture of mistrust and paranoia that dominated Iraq's intelligence apparatus for decades.

"How do you take that culture and turn it into an effective intelligence agency?" he asked.

Saddam-era spies at work in Iraq

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Enlarge	AP 1997 file photo
Saddam Hussein shook hands with then-Iranian health minister Ali Reza Marandi. Saddam had many spies focus on Iran, a long-time rival of Iraq. Some of those spies are now being hired with the support of the U.S.

The practice of hiring former intelligence agents seems to conflict with a new law designed to come to terms with people who worked in Saddam's ruling Baath Party. The "Accountability and Justice" law, passed this year, bans members of Saddam-era security services from government work because of their brutal reputation.

In the past, Iraq's government hasn't consistently or fairly applied regulations regarding the hiring of former Baath Party members, said Habib Nassar of the International Center for Transitional Justice, a non-profit group that studies human rights abuses. It's not clear how the law will be applied.

Spokesmen for the Iraqi government could not be reached for comment.

The issue highlights the difficulty of striking a balance between hiring experienced people and making a clean break from the past.

U.S. officials have approved of the practice of bringing back some former agents. Maguire said the hiring of former agents had "a lot of logic to it." He said he did not know how many agents would be affected by the ban on Baath Party members nor how many Saddam-era agents have been brought back.

Iraq's Interior Ministry intelligence department has been seeking "former regime intelligence officers, primarily ones that worked against the Iranian target," Maguire said.

Bringing agents back to work is fraught with risk, said Wayne White, a former deputy director of the State Department's Middle East intelligence office.

Because their "business was human rights violations," White said, those "who functioned in that environment must be to some degree morally warped."

Maguire said Iraq's government carefully vets any former Saddam-era intelligence agents before bringing them back into service. Most were lower-ranking Baath Party members, he said. "You don't want a guy who's got blood on his hands," Maguire said.

Recruiting former agents is a "stopgap measure," said Robert Baer, a former CIA officer with experience in the region. "They don't have any experienced people."

Iraq's intelligence apparatus has had experience in spying on Iran. The two countries have long been rivals and fought an eight-year war in the 1980s that left hundreds of thousands of people dead.

The U.S. military views Iran as a major obstacle to stabilizing Iraq. Washington has accused Iran of supplying armor-piercing roadside bombs and other weapons to Shiite militias who attack American and Iraqi forces.

Iran should stop training and financing militants, said Lt. Gen. Ray Odierno, who was the No. 2 U.S. commander in Iraq for the past year.

Iran has denied supporting militants.