GENEVA, May 6: The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said on Thursday it had repeatedly urged the United States to take "corrective action" at the Abu Ghraib jail.

The Geneva-based humanitarian agency has had regular access to the prison since US-led forces began using it last year, according to chief spokeswoman Antonella Notari.

"The ICRC, aware of the situation, and based on its findings, has repeatedly asked the US authorities to take corrective action," she said. Ms Notari declined to give details of what the ICRC had seen during the visits, which take place every five to six weeks, or about its reports to the US authorities.

The United Nations said separately it had written to US officials, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Iraq administrator Paul Bremer, seeking information on human rights in Iraq over the past year.

The Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, which has promised a report by the end of the month, said its investigators were ready to visit Baghdad for talks with US and Iraqi leaders.

The ICRC keeps a public silence about what it hears from detainees as the price for gaining access to jails in trouble spots around the world from Chechnya to West Africa.

The jail was also been the focus of a separate earlier probe by a US general. That report, by Major-General Antonio Taguba, covering the period Oct-Dec 2003 and completed on March 3, cited incidents of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses".

Ms Notari poured cold water on some US media reports suggesting that the ICRC had not had access to a special wing in the jail where the abuse took place. "To the best of our knowledge we have had access to all sectors," she said.

And she rejected a proposal from the new head of the jail, Major-General Geoffrey Miller, that the ICRC set up a permanent presence there, saying: "We are not going to be part of their organization."

The ICRC has visited thousands of prisoners under the control of US and British forces, which are also being investigated after a British newspaper published pictures of a soldier apparently urinating on an Iraqi detainee.

But Ms Notari declined to comment on what officials had seen in British-run jails. Under the Geneva Conventions on both prisoners and the treatment of civilians in wartime, the ICRC must be allowed to interview detainees in private and on a regular basis.

On these terms, it has carried out two visits to Saddam Hussein, in US custody since his capture in December. -Reuters