David Manning, who served as a Blair's top foreign-policy aide before being appointed ambassador to Washington in 2003, told a British inquiry into the Iraq war that the American military did not believe peacekeeping was their responsibility.

"The American military thought that they were fighting a war and when the war was over they were expecting to go home," he said.

Manning said that British troops in Basra talked to local residents but that U.S. troops were not willing to do that.

"I was very struck . . . by the reluctance of U.S. soldiers to get out of their tanks, to take off their helmets, and to try to build up links with local communities," he said. "They looked still much more in fighting mode than in peacekeeping mode."

He also said he believed Paul Bremer - the U.S. diplomat charged with overseeing the reconstruction of Iraq - made the situation worse by purging the army and police of members of Hussein's Baath party.

The inquiry, which is in its second week, is not set up to hold anyone liable for the conflict, but it does have the potential to embarrass U.S. and British officials who argued - wrongly - that the war was justified because Hussein was developing weapons of mass destruction and building close links with al-Qaeda.

(Reviving terrorism allegations against the Hussein regime, the Czech Republic's counterintelligence service said yesterday that in 2000 it disrupted plans by the dictator to attack the offices of U.S.-funded Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty in Prague to halt its broadcasts into Iraq.)

Manning said that then-President George W. Bush talked about possible links between Hussein and al-Qaeda right after the Sept. 11 attacks but that Blair counseled caution.

Manning said Blair had initially said Britain could support the United States in military action against Iraq only through the United Nations, though he did later accept that military action may be possible during a meeting with Bush at his ranch in Crawford, Texas, in April 2002.

Iraq Civilian Toll Sharply Falls

Iraq last month registered one of its lowest monthly civilian death tolls from insurgent and sectarian violence since the U.S.-led invasion in 2003, officials said yesterday.

According to figures compiled from various Iraqi ministries, a total of 88 Iraqi civilians were killed. This compares with more than 300 killed in October, which included a major bombing in Baghdad that claimed 155 lives.

The Iraqi tally - which includes reports from the Interior, Defense and Health Ministries - also showed a total of 32 members of Iraqi security forces were killed in November, for a total of 120 civilian and security deaths.

The officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to give the information to media.

- Associated Press