GENEVA - The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said Thursday it had repeatedly urged the United States to take "corrective action" at a Baghdad jail at the center of a scandal over abuse of Iraqi prisoners.

A naked detainee at the Abu Ghraib prison is tethered by a leash to prison guard Army Pvt Lynndie England in these undated photos. Relatives positively identified England from this photo. These photos were cropped from the waist down for publication purposes.

The Geneva-based humanitarian agency, mandated under international treaties to visit detainees, has had regular access to Abu Ghraib prison since U.S.-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 U.S. authorities to take corrective action," she told Reuters.

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 U.S. authorities.

The United Nations said separately that it had written to U.S. authorities, including Secretary of State Colin Powell and Governor of Iraq Paul Bremer, seeking information on human rights in Iraq over the past year, including treatment of detainees.

The Iraqi Governing Council and foreign ministers of other members of the U.S.-led coalition had also been asked to provide information.

The Office of the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights said in a statement its team was ready to visit Baghdad for talks with coalition and Iraqi leaders, before submitting a report on May 31. The inquiry is being led by Jakob Moller, a lawyer and human rights expert.

The ICRC, which has been operating since the late 19th century, 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.

Pictures of grinning U.S. soldiers abusing naked Iraqis at Abu Ghraib, Iraq's largest prison and notorious under Saddam Hussein for torture, have sparked an international outcry.

In a bid to limit damage to the U.S. image, President Bush went on two Arabic satellite television stations on Wednesday to tell an outraged Middle East that soldiers guilty of abusing Iraqi prisoners would be punished.

WANTON CRIMINAL ABUSES

Bush aides said the president had upbraided Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld for not having alerted him to the severity of the abuse at the jail, which was also the focus of a separate earlier probe by a U.S. general.

That report by Major-General Antonio Taguba, covering the period October-December 2003 and completed on March 3, cited incidents of "sadistic, blatant and wanton criminal abuses."

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

But 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, who is being held somewhere in Iraq since his capture by U.S. troops shortly before Christmas.

"It is important that people understand our role, which is to be present and to have a dialogue with the authorities," Notari said.

But on a few occasions the Red Cross has broken its vow of silence because either the authority concerned has issued a partial account of the ICRC's findings or has simply failed to take any action after a long period.

One such example involved Israeli treatment of detained Palestinians some 20 years ago, when the ICRC went public with its criticism, Notari said.

More recently, the ICRC has expressed mounting frustration over the situation of Afghan and other detainees at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, announcing that its concerns about conditions and treatment were not being addressed.

© 2004 Reuters Ltd

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