WASHINGTON, May 29: Interrogators from a detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were sent to Iraq last fall and played a major role in training American military intelligence teams at Abu Ghraib prison, The New York Times said on Saturday.

Citing unnamed senior military officials, the newspaper said the teams from Guantanamo Bay played a central role at Abu Ghraib through December, a time when the worst abuses of prisoners were taking place.

Prisoners captured in Iraq, unlike those held at Guantanamo, are protected by the Geneva Conventions.

According to the report, the teams were sent to Iraq for 90-day tours at the urging of Maj Gen Geoffrey Miller, then the head of detention operations at Guantanamo.

Gen Miller was sent to Iraq last summer to recommend improvements in detention operations there.

The involvement of the Guantanamo teams would be addressed in a major report on suspected abuses by military intelligence specialists that is being completed by Maj Gen George Fay, The Times said.

Military officials said he would determine whether tactics used by military interrogators at Guantanamo and in Afghanistan were wrongly applied in Iraq, including at Abu Ghraib, the report said.

Gen Fay is expected to brief Lt Gen Ricardo Sanchez, the top US commander in Iraq, on his findings sometime next week, the paper said, citing a senior Army official.

The involvement of the Guantanamo teams in Iraq marks the second major instance in which interrogation procedures at Abu Ghraib appear to have been modelled on those in place earlier in Guantanamo or in Afghanistan, The New York Times said. -AFP