LONDON, June 15: The US general in charge of Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq was told by a military intelligence commander that detainees should be treated like dogs, she said in an interview broadcast on Tuesday.

Janis Karpinski, the one-star general responsible for the military police who ran prisons in Iraq when pictures were taken showing prisoners being abused, said she and her soldiers were being made scapegoats for abuse ordered by others.

In the interview with Britain's BBC radio, Karpinski said Geoffrey Miller, a two-star general sent to Iraq from the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, had ordered new procedures in cell blocs where Iraqis were interrogated.

"He said, at Guantanamo Bay we've learned that the prisoners have to earn every single thing they have," Karpinski said. "He said they are like dogs, and if you allow them to believe at any point they are more than a dog then you've lost control of them."

The United States has charged low-ranking military police officers commanded by Karpinski with abuse after several of them appeared in photographs abusing detainees. The photographs and other reports of abuse have led to hearings in Congress and fuelled international outrage. -Reuters