ABU GHRAIB: A young Iraqi prisoner in yellow overalls stands in a cage at the Abu Ghraib jail with other inmates waiting to meet with their families. "So what has happened to the amnesty?" he asks.

In the new and improved Abu Ghraib, more than a thousand detainees are held in the collection of outdoor blocks that make up Camp Redemption in the prison complex. Work is under way on nearby Camp Liberty which is supposed to take inmates who may qualify for release from this US-run prison west of Baghdad.

They have to don the yellow overalls when they leave the camp to perform chores or when taken to the visitation area. Although those at Abu Ghraib are being held without trial, a big board outside Redemption written in Arabic reminds prisoners of their basic rights under the Geneva Conventions.

Life has certainly improved for the estimated 2,400 inmates left here since hundreds of photographs and reams of video footage surfaced in April depicting the horrors of abuse by US troops late last year.

A crew of cooks with a Saudi catering company is now busy preparing three meals a day to insure their daily 2,500-calorie intake. But this masks the fact that the prisoners' fate has never been more tenuous amid conflicting signals over a much-talked-about amnesty for some insurgents.

Both Prime Minister Iyad Allawi and President Ghazi al-Yawar said earlier this month that the amnesty would cover those who may have resisted the US occupation but are now ready to put down their arms after the handover of power on June 28 to the caretaker government.

Almost all of the so-called security detainees held at Abu Ghraib and another 2,640 held at Camp Bucca near the southern port city of Umm Qasr are accused of involvement in attacks against the US-led coalition or arms possession.

Yawar said in mid-July that the reprieve would cover everyone but rapists, murderers and kidnappers, in a bid to divide and weaken the 15-month insurgency that shows no sign of abating.

The announcement of the amnesty has already been delayed several times as Washington signalled that its perception of how the deal should work differs from that of the Iraqi government.

US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte said a week ago that the amnesty should be viewed more in its political context and that those who harmed the US-led military should never be pardoned.

At Redemption, anger and frustration reign as inmates battle the stifling summer heat under cloth tents erected behind high fences and wonder whether the elusive amnesty will include them.

"Allawi and Yawar are big liars, and Saddam, well ... he is the pride of the Arabs," shouts a young man in green shorts as a 70-year-old man on crutches and a man with two amputated legs move up to the gates to plead for mercy.

The US general charged with cleaning up Abu Ghraib and running it and Camp Bucca in the wake of the scandals has refused to comment on the amnesty. Instead, Geoffrey Miller, deputy commanding general for detainee operations, is aiming to forge a partnership with the Iraqi interim government to process the prisoners' cases.

As of late July, six Iraqi representatives will sit on a board alongside three US officers to decide to release detainees or refer cases to Iraq's central criminal court, set up by the US-led occupation early this year.

But amnesty or not, the fate of most of the prisoners seems to be sealed. Miller said on a recent trip to Camp Bucca that he believes only "an enormously small number" of those held in US detention centres are potentially innocent of crimes against the US-led forces. -AFP