'Our mission in Iraq is to build a free nation … to end violence and instability'

A study by Amnesty International, Carnage and Despair, found that in war-torn Iraq two out of three Iraqis had no access to safe drinking water.

Aside from highlighting the desperate poverty in Iraq, the human-rights campaign group focused on security dangers to civilians in a country where sectarian killings are common.

It also warned that Iraqi government forces were involved in torture and ill-treatment, while the detention of thousands of suspects by US and Iraqi forces have had a devastating impact.

Amnesty said this had led to more than four million Iraqis being displaced from their homes while many detainees were held without charge or trial, some for several years.

Amnesty's study also focused on the humanitarian disaster still unfolding in the country which boasts the world's second-largest oil reserves. Some eight million people need emergency aid to survive, Amnesty said.

Malcolm Smart, the group's director for the Middle East and North Africa, said: "Saddam Hussein's administration was a byword for human-rights abuse. But its replacement has brought no respite for the Iraqi people."

Mr Smart said political opponents had been detained without trial and so-called honour crimes remained a deep-seated problem which the authorities criticised but failed to address adequately.

Amnesty said no-one knows exactly how many people had been killed in Iraq since the US-led invasion in March 2003.

A survey carried out jointly by the World Health Organisation and the Iraqi government published last January said more than 150,000 people had been killed by June 2006. And the UN reported that almost 35,000 people were killed in 2006.

Amnesty said trials were "routinely unfair" with convictions on evidence allegedly obtained under torture, and hundreds had been sentenced to death.

"This is one of the most worrying aspects for the future," said Mr Smart. "Even when faced with overwhelming evidence of torture under their watch, the Iraqi authorities have failed to hold the perpetrators to account and the US and its allies have failed to demand that they do so."

The body said that for many women now at risk from religious militants, conditions had actually deteriorated compared with Saddam's rule.

ONE in three Iraqis relies on emergency aid to survive, a damning report has found – five years after the Iraq war was launched with the apparent aim of bringing peace and stability to the country.

According to the report, even in the relatively peaceful Kurdish region of northern Iraq, economic improvement has not been accompanied by greater respect for human rights.

"Arbitrary arrests, detentions and torture continue to be reported even from the Kurdish provinces," said Mr Smart. "And peaceful political dissent is scarcely tolerated."

Prime Minister Gordon Brown is under fresh Conservative pressure to agree a Privy Council inquiry into the "origins and conduct" of the Iraq war.

Shadow foreign secretary William Hague said the fifth anniversary of the war was the right time for a full inquiry.

The Liberal Democrats have repeated their demands for an "early and full" withdrawal of British troops.

Meanwhile, Jonathan Powell, the former chief of staff to Tony Blair, admitted yesterday that the coalition had planned for the "wrong kind of aftermath".

"I think we probably hadn't thought through the magnitude of what we were taking on in Iraq. This is something that will take many decades to sort out," he said.

CENTRAL ROLE FOR CITIZENS IN SECURITY PLAN

THE government's long-awaited national security strategy will be published this week and will be centred on the threat to citizens, not the state, the minister responsible said.

Lord West said the first of the annual reports would be unveiled by Gordon Brown on Wednesday and insisted it would include specific policy proposals.

The strategy, which is four months behind schedule, is supposed to set out "the threats we face and the objectives we pursue".

As well as terrorism, it will cover areas as diverse as a bird flu pandemic, major flooding and failed states, but Lord West dismissed suggestions that it would be no more than a "worthy" study.

"There are some areas which we have got very well under control," the former head of the Navy said. "There are other areas where a lot of work is needed and what this is doing is identifying that and giving us a focus as a way to move forward.

"Rather than anything in the past which was produced – very much defence, foreign policy, a bit of Home Office, the threat to the state – we are now much more looking at the citizen and tying the citizen into this. Let's think of their vigilance; how does this involve them?"