Britain agrees to Iraq request as US soldier jailed over prison scandal

BAGHDAD (AFP) - Britain agreed to move crack troops closer to Baghdad to aid efforts to crush rebel strongholds, as a US soldier at the heart of the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison was jailed for eight years and expelled from the army.
Meanwhile, the Iraqi government voiced concern over a lack of UN experts on the ground to prepare for the landmark polls, which are threatened by the insurgency.
Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon announced in London that Britain had agreed to a US request to redeploy an "armoured battle group" from the Black Watch regiment into a US-controlled section of Iraq, west of Baghdad.
He told parliament the move was not related to the November 2 US presidential elections, as many critics have suggested.
"This deployment is a vital part of the process of creating the right conditions for the Iraqi elections to take place in January," he said.
A spokesman for Britain's 8,500-strong contingent, based in the relatively calm southern city of Basra, declined immediate comment.
US and Iraqi officials are determined to crush a resistance that has run riot in Iraq since last year's US-led invasion and to pave the way for the elections promised by January 31.
Their prime target is the rebel-held city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, that has been hit by nearly nightly US air raids and ringed by more than 1,000 troops for the past week.
Washington firmly believes the Sunni Muslim bastion has provided refuge for Abu Mussab al-Zarqawi, Iraq's most wanted man, who has claimed responsibility for a series of car-bombings and kidnappings in the country.
Underscoring the uphill struggle to restore stability by January, there was no news on the Baghdad chief of international aid group CARE, Margaret Hassan, a British-Irish national, who was taken hostage by gunmen on Tuesday.
Her Iraqi husband said he was cautiously optimistic the 59-year-old fluent Arabic speaker, who has lived in Iraq for 30 years, would be released quickly.
"I do not know the party that kidnapped her but they should know that my wife has given a lot to the Iraqi people and that she is Iraqi," Tahsin Ali Hassan told AFP, adding that he was unsure whether his wife was abducted for financial or political motives.
CARE suspended its operations in Iraq on Wednesday after Hassan became the latest victim in a hostage crisis that has already claimed scores of lives and prompted many other international humanitarian agencies to flee.
The dangerous climate has also kept experts from the United Nations, which is helping to prepare for elections, from working in the country.
That was lamented by Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari.
"The number of UN experts is no more than 30, while there were more than 300 in Timor," Zebari was quoted Thursday as saying, while reaffirming the government's commitment to holding the vote as scheduled.
The United Nations largely pulled out of Iraq after its Baghdad headquarters was targeted in a suicide car bombing in August 2003 that killed 22 staff.
In one sign of progress as the government struggles to restore order, an arms-for-cash scheme in a restive Baghdad slum entered its final day with officials saying three million dollars have been dished out to people handing in their weapons since it October 11.
Courtroom dramas also continued to unfold as Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick, a US soldier at the centre of Iraq's prisoner abuse scandal, was sentenced to eight years in jail and dishonourably discharged from the army.
Frederick, the highest-ranking soldier to be tried so far over the scandal, had pleaded guilty to a range of charges from making hooded inmates masturbate to punching them in the chest.
He was the first of three military police due to appear before a court martial this week.
In a separate case, the trial of one of two US soldiers charged with murdering an Iraqi civilian in a Baghdad slum this year opened on Thursday.
Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban from the Baghdad-based 1st Cavalry Division stands accused of premeditated murder and conspiracy to murder.
Meanwhile, two members of Iraq's national guard and a woman were killed in a drive-by shooting as they were travelling in Baghdad, the interior ministry said.
In addition, two policemen and two more national guards were wounded by a roadside bomb in the centre of the restive city of Baquba.
The casualties came after a wave of car bombings on Wednesday killed nine people, including four children and injured many others including 11 US troops.