BAGHDAD (AFP) - Hundreds of British troops prepared to move closer to Baghdad to help crush rebel strongholds, as a US soldier was jailed for eight years for his part in Iraq's prisoner abuse scandal.
In the north of the country, Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi narrowly escaped a mortar attack while on a trip to Mosul, as officials expressed concern about a lack of experts on the ground to help prepare landmark elections set for January because of security fears.
In London, British Defence Secretary Geoff Hoon agreed to an unprecedented US request to redeploy 850 crack troops to a volatile area to the southwest of Baghdad, freeing up US soldiers for an expected assault on the insurgent hub of Fallujah.
The redeployment marks the first time since the March 2003 invasion that British soldiers have left southern Iraq for US-controlled areas, where they will be at increased risk of attack, but they appeared to be ready for action.
"There is a sense of relief that they have been told what to do so now they are focusing on the job in hand," said Major Charles Mayo, spokesman for the British-led Multi-National Division South East, base in Iraq's second city of Basra.
"They are now making preparations for moving," Mayo told AFP by telephone, though he declined to say when the contingent would head northwards.
Britain has about 8,500 troops in the relatively tame south, mostly around Basra, compared to 138,000 US troops in the centre and north.
Washington's request for back-up came as it focuses on resolving a stand-off in the rebel-held city of Fallujah, west of Baghdad, that has been hit by near daily US air raids, including one on Thursday, and ringed by more than 1,000 troops for the past week.
US officials believe 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-Iraqi national, who was taken hostage by gunmen on Tuesday.
CARE suspended its operations in Iraq on Wednesday after the 59-year-old 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 prevented 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.
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 in the struggle to restore order, an arms-for-cash scheme in a restive Baghdad slum entered its final day with interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi saying that 4.5 million dollars have been dished out to people handing in their weapons since it began October 11.
At a US military court in Baghdad, Staff Sergeant Ivan Frederick was sentenced to eight years in prison and expelled from the army for abusing inmates at Baghdad's Abu Ghraib jail, as the hearing of another US soldier charged with murdering an Iraqi opened.
Frederick, the highest-ranking official to be tried so far in the prison abuse case, had pleaded guilty to a range of five charges from making hooded inmates masturbate to punching them in the chest.
A military judge also demoted the 38-year-old before the discharge and docked his pay.
Frederick is the first of three military police due to be court martialled in Baghdad this week for their alleged part in abuse at Abu Ghraib.
Away from the spotlight of the prison abuse scandal, Staff Sergeant Cardenas Alban stood in a courtroom accused of premeditated murder and conspiracy to murder.
Alban and fellow staff sergeant Johnny Horne, who is due to appear before a judge at a later date, are charged with shooting dead a wounded Iraqi in Baghdad's Shiite slum of Sadr City whom they say was so badly injured he would have died anyway.
If convicted the soldiers face a minimum of life in prison or a maximum of the death sentence.
Meanwhile, insurgents fired mortars close to Allawi and his entourage, which included the interior minister and his national security advisor, during a visit to Mosul, but no one was injured.
Mortars fell on a multinational force base as Allawi and other visiting officials were getting ready to board helicopters on their way back to Baghdad.
In further unrest, two members of Iraq's national guard and a woman were killed in a drive-by shooting in Baghdad, while two policemen and two 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.
10-21-2004, 19h31