BASRA, Jan 4: British Prime Minister Tony Blair defended the Iraq invasion in a surprise visit to the southern port of Basra on Sunday, while US troops arrested a senior Kurdish official in the ethnic tinderbox of Kirkuk.

On the ground, insurgents wounded one US soldier in Iraq as they carried on their attacks against the Americans nearly nine months after the fall of Saddam Hussein.

Blair, who has just ended a holiday in Egypt, said the war ousting Saddam was necessary to make the world safe from regimes coveting weapons of mass destruction (WMD).

"If we had backed away... we would never have been able to confront this threat in the other countries where it exists," Blair told British troops. It was his second trip to Iraq since the US-led invasion last March.

At home, Blair is still dogged by charges that key intelligence on Iraq and WMD had been exaggerated or "sexed up" in the countdown to the springtime war. Britain's top diplomat in Iraq, Sir Jeremy Greenstock, meanwhile warned of more "big bang" insurgent attacks on the US-led coalition, despite progress on the political front.

In a new development, US troops detained an official from the Kurdish Democratic Party (KDP), one of its main allies in Iraq, during raids also targeting the rival Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) in the northern city of Kirkuk.

"A senior KDP official was detained," said Sergeant Robert Cargie of the Fourth Infantry Division based in Tikrit. The KDP was not immediately available for comment.

During Saturday's raid on the KDP offices, US troops confiscated two rocket-propelled grenade (RPG) launchers, two AK-47s, two 107-millimetre rockets and an assault rifle, Cargie said. One AK-47 and five RPGs were confiscated from the offices of the PUK, Cargie added.

A wave of violence has shaken Kirkuk since last Wednesday when four people were killed after PUK militiamen opened fire on a demonstration of Turkmen and Arabs protesting the Kurdish drive to incorporate Kirkuk into Iraqi Kurdistan.

That was followed by the stabbing of two Kurds and the shooting of an Arab in clashes with police. The KDP and PUK, which have ruled the provinces of Dohuk, Arbil and Sulaimaniyah since the end of the 1991 Gulf War, have been key boosters of the US occupation.

On the political front, Iraq's interim Governing Council President Adnan Pachachi underlined his commitment to a federal Iraq, but counselled the Kurds, eager for virtual autonomy, to be patient and not rush the issue.

"We have accepted federalism in principle, but there are different forms of federalism in the world and I cannot tell you for the moment what the final form will be in Iraq," Pachachi, the 25-member council's president for January, said on Iraqi television.

Kurdish leaders Jalal Talabani and Massoud Barzani have already put forward draft legislation to the Governing Council demanding recognition of their position well before the approval on March 1 next year of a Basic Law to govern Iraq during the transition period through 2005.

A US soldier was shot in the leg Sunday while on patrol in Saddam's hometown of Tikrit, Cargie said. In Balad, US soldiers shot dead two armed rebels Saturday who had stepped out of a building and opened fire on them, he said.

Mosul car blast: Two Iraqis were killed and a Jordanian was wounded on Saturday when their car exploded in the northern city of Mosul, police said on Sunday.

"Two Iraqis were killed and a Jordanian, Ezzedine Ahmad Ibrahim, 25, was wounded when their car ... exploded in the city's eastern Ansar district," said police Lieutenant Samir Najm Azzawi.

The car was a Brazilian-made taxi, he added. The officer said Ibrahim was being interrogated about the blast which investigators believed was caused by explosives and flammable products inside the vehicle.-AFP