Iraq denies US report on political executions

Iraq has denied a US State Department report that Iraq had recently executed a group of political prisoners.

Iraqi TV on Thursday evening quoted a statement by a spokesman for the Iraqi Culture and Information Ministry denying the report.

"The US statement, which was based on so-called reliable sources, crowns a systematic propaganda campaign that started on Monday in London with a statement issued by two groups belonging to the so-called Iraqi opposition - the Communist Party and the National Congress - which are there under the sponsorship of the British intelligence services," the Iraqi statement said.

The spokesman added that the USA and Britain, had tried " many deceptive propaganda methods to confront the growing feelings of anger in the world, which increased during the current US-Iraqi crisis, in protest against the big stick logic the United States uses against the causes of people" .

He said that all these methods had failed and any new methods would not be any different.

BBC Monitoring (http://www.monitor.bbc.co.uk), based in Caversham in southern England, selects and translates information from radio, television, press, news agencies and the Internet from 150 countries in more than 70 languages.