WASHINGTON, March 14: US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales refused on Tuesday to resign over accusations that his department sacked eight government prosecutors for political reasons.

Gonzales, already a target of pressure for FBI abuse of privacy rights in its anti-terror investigations, and long criticised for helping the White House justify torture of terror suspects, pinned the blame for the newest Justice Department scandal on his chief of staff, who resigned earlier on Tuesday. “I acknowledge that mistakes were made. I accept that responsibility,” Gonzales said at a news conference.

However, he rejected calls by opposition Democrats to step down for what they condemned as a blatant abuse of power.

“I am here not because I give up; I am here because I've learned from my mistakes, because I accept responsibility and because I'm committed to doing my job,” he said.

But Gonzales, the country's top law enforcement official, said he had not known of the details of the effort by the White House and Justice Department officials to force out US attorneys who were not seen as cooperative by the White House and Republican politicians.

He said his chief of staff, Kyle Sampson, took the lead in those efforts, and was in contact with the White House over the process.

“I was not involved in seeing any memos, was not involved in any discussion about what was going on,” Gonzales told reporters.

The newest embarrassment at the Department of Justice brought calls from leaders of the opposition Democrats for Gonzales to step down and demands that President George W. Bush himself come clean about the White House's involvement.

Evidence reported in several newspapers linked the firings to top Bush aides Karl Rove, the president's key political adviser, and then-White House Counsel Harriet Miers.

“The president must clarify his role in this whole matter,” US Senator Charles Schumer said at a press conference.—–AFP