04 July 2004	Sunday	15 Jamadi-ul-Awwal 1425

LONDON, July 3: The US general who was in charge of Baghdad's notorious Abu Ghraib prison said on Saturday she had met an Israeli interrogator in Iraq, a controversial allegation likely to irritate many in the Arab world.

A US military spokesman in Washington said he had no information and an Israeli official denied Israel was involved.

Brigadier-General Janis Karpinski, who was responsible for military police guarding all Iraqi jails at the time prisoners were abused by US troops there, told the BBC she met the Israeli at a Baghdad interrogation centre.

"He was clearly from the Middle East and he said: 'Well, I do some of the interrogation here and of course I speak Arabic, but I'm not an Arab. I'm from Israel'," she said.

"My initial reaction was to laugh because I thought maybe he was joking, and I realised he was serious," said Karpinski who has been suspended from her command for failings at Abu Ghraib but has not been charged with any wrongdoing.

An Israeli security source told said: "Israel was not and is not involved in the interrogation of anyone in Iraq."

Israeli involvement in Iraq could anger Arabs who accuse Washington of favouring the Jewish state in its conflict with the Palestinians and in wider disputes with its Arab neighbours.

Israel has denied similar reports in the past of involvement in US. operations in the Middle East. Last month, it denied a report in the New Yorker magazine that it was training Kurdish fighters in Iraq to counter Shia militias there.

Photographs of military police abusing prisoners in Abu Ghraib and other reports of abuse have led to hearings in Congress and fuelled Arab and international outrage.

US ARMY REPORT: A report by a US Army general into prisoner abuse by US troops in Iraq and Afghanistan says bad training, organization and policy on military detention are to blame, The New York Times said on Friday.

The report by Lieutenant General Paul Mikolashek, which is expected to be released in the next couple of weeks, said inadequate training for military jailers and interrogators, poor leadership, overcrowded cells and poor medical care for the prisoners also contributed to the abuse and torture.

However, the report found no systemic abuse at US-run prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan and will probably not assign any blame to senior US officers in Iraq, defence officials familiar with the report, told the daily.

The report is based on a four-month review by a team of military specialists. "s going to be a tough report," said one defence official. "It will show that these various problems helped to create and contribute to an environment that left room for human error and possibly misconduct by soldiers."

Mikolashek, a former commander of land forces in the Middle East, and his team interviewed military and civilian personnel in Iraq, Afghanistan and Kuwait, and army training centres in Louisiana and California, the officials said.

His report will also make a series of recommendations, including an overhaul of army policies on detainee operations. -Reuters / AFP