Sunni insurgents have cut the roads linking the city to the rest of Iraq. The country is being partitioned as militiamen fight bloody battles for control of towns and villages north and south of the capital.

As American and British political leaders argue over responsibility for the crisis in Iraq, the country has taken another lurch towards disintegration.

Well-armed Sunni tribes now largely surround Baghdad and are fighting Shia militias to complete the encirclement.

The Sunni insurgents seem to be following a plan to control all the approaches to Baghdad. They have long held the highway leading west to the Jordanian border and east into Diyala province. Now they seem to be systematically taking over routes leading north and south.

Dusty truck-stop and market towns such as Mahmoudiyah, Balad and Baquba all lie on important roads out of Baghdad. In each case Sunni fighters are driving out the Shia and tightening their grip on the capital. Shias may be in a strong position within Baghdad but they risk their lives when they take to the roads. Some 30 Shias were dragged off a bus yesterday after being stopped at a fake checkpoint south of Balad.

In some isolated neighbourhoods in Baghdad, food shortages are becoming severe. Shops are open for only a few hours a day. "People have been living off water melon and bread for the past few weeks," said one Iraqi from the capital. The city itself has broken up into a dozen or more hostile districts, the majority of which are controlled by the main Shia militia, the Mehdi Army.

The scale of killing is already as bad as Bosnia at the height of the Balkans conflict. An apocalyptic scenario could well emerge - with slaughter on a massive scale. As America prepares its exit strategy, the fear in Iraq is of a genocidal conflict between the Sunni minority and the Shias in which an entire society implodes. Individual atrocities often obscure the bigger picture where:

* upwards of 1,000 Iraqis are dying violently every week;

* Shia fighters have taken over much of Baghdad; the Sunni encircle the capital;

* the Iraqi Red Crescent says 1.5 million people have fled their homes within the country;

* the Shia and Sunni militias control Iraq, not the enfeebled army or police.

No target is too innocent. Yesterday a bomb tore through a party of wedding guests in Ur, on the outskirts of Sadr City, killing 15 people, including four children. Iraqi wedding parties are very identifiable, with coloured streamers attached to the cars and cheering relatives hanging out the windows.

Amid all this, Dick Cheney, the US Vice-President, has sought to turn the fiasco of Iraq into a vote-winner with his claim that the Iraqi insurgents have upped their attacks on US forces in a bid to influence the mid-term elections. There is little evidence to support this. In fact, the number of American dead has risen steadily this year from 353 in January to 847 in September and will be close to one thousand in October.

And there is growing confusion over the role of the US military. In Sadr City, the sprawling slum in the east of the capital that is home to 2.5 million people, American soldiers have been setting up barriers of cement blocks and sandbags after a US soldier was abducted, supposedly by the Mehdi Army. The US also closed several of the bridges across the Tigris river making it almost impossible to move between east and west Baghdad. Nouri al-Maliki, the Iraqi Prime Minister, added to the sense of chaos yesterday when he ordered the US army to end its Sadr City siege.

Mr Maliki has recently criticised the US for the failure of its security policy in Iraq and resisted American pressure to eliminate the militias. Although President Bush and Tony Blair publicly handed back sovereignty to Iraq in June 2004, Mr Maliki said: "I am now Prime Minister and overall commander of the armed forces yet I cannot move a single company without Coalition [US and British] approval."

In reality the militias are growing stronger by the day because the Shia and Sunni communities feel threatened and do not trust the army and police to defend them. US forces have been moving against the Mehdi Army, which follows the nationalist cleric Muqtada al-Sadr, but he is an essential prop to Mr Maliki's government. Almost all the main players in Iraqi politics maintain their own militias. The impotence of US forces to prevent civil war is underlined by the fact that the intense fighting between Sunni and Shia around Balad, north of Baghdad, has raged for a month, although the town is beside one of Iraq's largest American bases. The US forces have done little and when they do act they are seen by the Shia as pursuing a feud against the Mehdi Army.

One eyewitness in Balad said two US gunships had attacked Shia positions on Sunday killing 11 people and seriously wounding six more, several of whom lost legs and arms. He added that later two Iraqi regular army platoons turned up in Balad with little military equipment. When they were asked by locals why their arms were so poor "the reply was that they were under strict orders by the US commander from the [nearby] Taji camp not to intervene and they were stripped of their rocket-propelled grenade launchers".

Another ominous development is that Iraqi tribes that often used to have both Sunni and Shia members are now splitting along sectarian lines.

In Baghdad it has become lethally dangerous for a Sunni to wander into a Shia neighbourhood and vice versa. In one middle-class district called al-Khudat, in west Baghdad, once favoured by lawyers and judges, the remaining Shia families recently found a cross in red paint on their doors. Sometimes there is also a note saying "leave without furniture and without renting your house". Few disobey.

MPs made angry demands for an inquiry into the Iraq war as they lambasted the Government over its handling of the invasion during the first full debate on the war in more than two years.

In a heated three-hour debate, Margaret Beckett, the Foreign Secretary, faced repeated calls for a full investigation to learn the lessons of the war and its aftermath.

Mrs Beckett insisted that it was not the time to hold a "backward looking" inquiry, saying it would send the wrong signal to insurgents in Iraq and the Iraqi people, and that it would undermine the armed forces.

Labour rebels joined Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs to back a debate called by Plaid Cymru and the Scottish Nationalist Party demanding that seven senior MPs conduct an inquiry into the war. But some Labour backbenchers fought back, denouncing the "opportunistic" attacks and calls for an inquiry.

Opening the debate, the Plaid Cymru MP Adam Price said British troops were in a "quagmire" in Iraq and attacked the war as the "worst foreign policy disaster since Suez".

Mr Price said: "There are two Iraqs - the Iraq of George Bush and the Prime Minister where things are going to plan and getting better all the time, and the real Iraq of murder and mayhem, whose future is uncertain."

He said: "It's time now to tell the Prime Minister and all future prime ministers that they are not president and that the policy of this United Kingdom does not always have to be the policy of the United States."

Mr Price told MPs: "The inquiry we are calling for is not just essential to understanding what happened three-and-a-half years ago. It's imperative in understanding where we go from here."

William Hague, the shadow Foreign Secretary, urged ministers to pledge an inquiry within the coming year.

He said: "We believe when operations have been going on for more than three years and are expected to diminish considerably in future months, and in a country where we are meant to enjoy the great democratic strength of being able to debate our successes and our failures, [that] to postpone the establishment of such an inquiry beyond another session of parliament would be beyond the limits of what is reasonable."

Mrs Beckett insisted, however, that Iraq was at a "turning point". She said: "At this critical juncture, when Iraq's future hangs so clearly in the balance, it would be wrong, plainly and simply wrong, to heed those who argue for us just to wash our hands of responsibility and walk away."

She acknowledged that it was "perfectly sensible and legitimate to say that there will come a time when these issues will be explored in the round and in full". But she added: "Is this the moment to take a decision and a step of the kind recommended in the motion? My answer is a resounding no."

Malcolm Rifkind, a former Conservative defence secretary, asked Mrs Beckett: "In the three years since this war has taken place, the Government has not initiated a single debate in this chamber. When the US Congress has as recently as June been permitted a full debate on these matters, isn't it appalling that when the Government has been responsible for such inherent misuse of its powers this chamber has not been allowed to debate this matter?"

Jeremy Corbyn, the veteran anti-war Labour MP, said an inquiry was necessary to prevent future conflict. He said: "It will open up the books, open up the record of what happened in 2003. If we want to live in a world of perpetual wars throughout this century we are going the right way about it... We should examine what we did and hopefully learn the lessons from it."

David Blunkett, the former home secretary, said that a minority of MPs had changed their minds about whether it was right to go to war in Iraq, but "there are those who have not changed their minds but cannot miss an opportunity to have a go at this Government and the Prime Minister whatever the consequences". He said that Conservatives who were supporting a motion from the Scottish nationalists with which they did not agree "can only be described as hypocrites".

Michael Moore, the Liberal Democrat shadow Foreign Secretary, said: "Three years ago British soldiers patrolled the streets of Basra in caps and berets and handed out sweets to the children. Now we learn that our staff have been evacuated from our consulate in Basra."

He added: "All of us on these benches and many others in the House opposed the original, dreadful decision to invade Iraq. We feared the worst but even in our pessimism we underestimated the horrors of the situation as we see them today. There needs to be accountability for the mistakes that were made and there needs to be lessons learned."

Denis MacShane, a former Foreign Office minister, appealed to Conservative MPs not to join what he called "the axis of opportunism" by supporting a motion from the Scottish nationalists, who had opposed the Iraq war and the Nato intervention in Kosovo. "That party has not found any despot around the world that it would not support so long as it is anti-American," he said.

Sir Peter Tapsell, a Tory MP who opposed the Iraq war, described it as "a strategic, political and humanitarian blunder of historic magnitude". He added: "Our Prime Minister is, figuratively speaking, more deeply steeped in blood than any Scottish politician since Macbeth. We need an inquiry to tell us how he led us into this disaster and to make sure that no vainglorious and ignorant prime minister can ever do so again."

Charles Kennedy, the former Liberal Democrat leader, making his first Commons speech since his forced resignation in January, said that there was a "suspicion" that the Government never had any plan other than to join the Americans in invading Iraq.

But he was also scathing about the "convoluted consensus" now being sought by the Conservatives, and reminded MPs of how vehemently they supported the war at the time. "The Conservatives have not exactly played their part in asking questions, which is why inquiries remain outstanding," he said.

He added: "The goalposts kept moving through this whole tragic episode. It was a moral case at one point; at another point it was a strategic defence of our interests because Iraq had a 45-minute threat of potential obliteration and all the rest of it. Yet in the final debate what did he [Blair] say? - 'even at this late stage, Saddam and his sons can save their regime if they comply with United Nations resolutions'. So much for the moral argument. The truth will out one day. We will never know how many people lost their lives, but on the political tombstone of this Prime Minister will be the word, Iraq."

The Labour rebels

The 12 Labour MPs who called for an inquiry into the Iraq war:

Harry Cohen, Leyton and Wanstead

Jeremy Corbyn, Islington N

Mark Fisher, Stoke-on-Trent Central

Glenda Jackson, Hampstead and Highgate

Roger Godsiff, Birmingham Sparkbrook and Small Heath

John McDonnell, Hayes and Harlington

Alan Simpson, Nottingham S

Sir Peter Soulsby, Leicester S

Robert Marshall-Andrews, Medway

Gavin Strang, Edinburgh East

Robert Wareing, Liverpool West Derby

Mike Wood, Batley

Kuwait City - War-ravaged Iraq needs around $100 billion in the next four to five years to recover and rebuild its infrastructure, a government spokesman said Tuesday at the opening of an international aid meeting.

"Until the oil sector picks up ... we will need this much for the infrastructure and for investment expenses," Ali al-Dabbagh told reporters at a preparatory meeting for the International Compact for Iraq, a five-year plan to ensure Iraq's government has funds to survive and enact key political and economic reforms.

Al-Dabbagh called the $100 billion an "unofficial figure," and said he hoped more countries, especially Arab states, would participate in the program.

Iraq's deputy prime minister, Barham Saleh, told the meeting: "You can participate by offering serious and new financial and economic support to cover for the shortage in budget revenues needed for enhancing Iraq's security capabilities, to build the infrastructure and to enable the Iraqi government to improve public services."

The Iraqi government established the International Compact for Iraq in June, shortly after Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki took office. Tuesday marked one in a series of meetings to discuss details before the compact is finalized by the end of this year.

A donor's conference for Iraq held in Madrid in 2003 raised pledges for $13.5 billion, but so far only around $3.5 billion has made its way to the country, mired in sectarian fighting.

The remaining $10 billion is being held up by a lack of viable projects or by fears that aid will be siphoned away in Iraq's corrupt contracting environment.

"The government of Iraq, needless to say, has the primary responsibility for tackling the grave challenges it faces today," Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, the special representative of the United Nations secretary-general, told the meeting. "But given their magnitude, the support of the international community and particularly of its compact partners is indispensable if Iraq to succeed."

Robert Kimmit, U.S. deputy treasury secretary, headed the American delegation at the one-day meeting in oil-rich Kuwait, a major ally of Washington. Canada, France, Germany, Japan, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Spain, the United Kingdom, the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund were also present.

"Iraq is a very rich country," that does not need donations, but it needs to know it has "friends and brothers" willing to help, Kuwait's foreign minister, Sheik Mohammed Al Sabah, told reporters.

"All that we ask for as neighbors is that Iraq stays united and does not slip into civil war," he said.

More US officers doubt insurgents would gain, and believe that Baghdad must be pushed.

Washington - Growing numbers of American military officers have begun to privately question a key tenet of U.S. strategy in Iraq - that setting a hard deadline for troop reductions would strengthen the insurgency and undermine efforts to create a stable state.

The Iraqi government's refusal to take certain measures to reduce sectarian tensions between Sunni Arabs and the nation's Shiite Muslim majority has led these officers to conclude that Iraqis will not make difficult decisions unless they are pushed. Therefore, they say, the advantages of deadlines may outweigh the drawbacks.

"Deadlines could help ensure that the Iraqi leaders recognize the imperative of coming to grips with the tough decisions they've got to make for there to be progress in the political arena," said a senior Army officer who has served in Iraq. He asked that his name not be used because he did not want to publicly disagree with the stated policy of the president.

Former Pentagon official Kurt Campbell said more officers are calling for deadlines after concluding that the indefinite presence of U.S. forces enables the Shiite-run Iraqi government to avoid making compromises.

"There is a new belief that the biggest problem that we face is that our forces are the sand in the gears creating problems," said Campbell, coauthor of a book on national security policy. "We are making things worse by giving the Iraqis a false sense of security at the governing level."

For months, the Bush administration has been politely prodding the Iraqis on political and security reforms including the sharing of oil revenue, a crackdown on Shiite militias and constitutional changes. The discussions so far have yielded little, prompting experts to question whether the Iraqi government will ever compromise if there is no penalty for failing to make hard choices.

Over the last week, Bush administration officials have spoken about possible timetables for progress in Iraq, but softened their suggestions after talks with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki.

Although top administration officials are still steering clear of discussing the timing of American troop withdrawals, the officers' comments come alongside public statements by prominent Republicans who have begun talking about the need to establish a date that the U.S. will begin to draw down, whether or not the Iraqi government takes steps toward political compromise.

President Bush and other administration opponents of hard deadlines have argued that telegraphing troop departures would help the insurgents.

Once the U.S. sets a withdrawal date, the Sunni-led guerrillas know how long they must hang on before American troops are gone, the administration has argued.

Opponents of timetables also fear that small drawdowns will unleash public demand for more dramatic withdrawals, allowing violence fomented by Sunni insurgents and Shiite militias to erode whatever political advances have been made.

Military officials generally have agreed with the civilian leadership that a deadline would strengthen insurgent and militia groups. But the failure of the Iraqi government to move forward on key political and security measures has left senior military leaders frustrated.

Although U.S. military leaders remain wary of the consequences of imposing deadlines, increasingly officers say they are starting to look more attractive. The shift in opinion is a sign that gridlock in the Iraqi government is seen as a greater threat to achieving stability in Iraq than the insurgency itself.

John Batiste, a retired major general who commanded a division in Iraq and has been critical of Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, said that setting a date for a drawdown of combat brigades must be considered. Before the deadline, Batiste said, the U.S. also needs to step up its effort to advise and train the Iraqi military and police.

"Holding the Iraqi government accountable is important, and that has everything to do with setting expectations and timelines," Batiste said. "It also has everything to do with doing all we can to ensure they are capable completing the task they are trying to do."

Some officers who have served in Iraq believe that much of the Iraqi government is not functioning effectively. Finding ways to force the sectarian factions to put aside their differences and focus on improving security and basic services must be the top priority in Iraq, these officers say. Without government reform, the Iraqi security forces are unlikely to ever be strong enough to take on the insurgency or the sectarian militias.

"It's basic counterinsurgency," said a military officer who has served in Baghdad and did not want to publicly disagree with the president's stated policy. "You have to have a trusted, capable government."

Some in the military argue that publicizing a timetable for reducing forces is far less damaging to a counterinsurgency campaign than the administration has suggested.

Many officers, particularly those who adhere to the military philosophy of former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, a retired Army general who served as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, believe that deadlines are necessary to avoid getting mired in an endless war fueled by enmity between Iraq's long-subjugated Shiite population and the Sunni Arabs who ran the government under Saddam Hussein.

"The Powell Doctrine is all about overwhelming numbers of troops with specific missions, with specified end-states, for specified durations with - go figure - an exit strategy," said the officer who has served in Baghdad. "To not mention this stuff is actually counter to the contemporary military mind-set."

Although Democrats like Sen. Carl Levin of Michigan, the ranking minority member of the Armed Services Committee, have long argued that a deadline is the best way to move development of the Iraqi security force forward, opponents of the administration are no longer the only ones making the argument.

A number of Republicans now have either explicitly endorsed timelines for troop drawdowns or voiced support for considering a strategy shift.

Among them are Rep. Christopher Shays of Connecticut, Sen. Arlen Specter of Pennsylvania and Richard L. Armitage, Powell's former top deputy at the State Department.

Sen. John W. Warner, the Republican chair of the Armed Services Committee, has called for a new approach if the security situation does not improve.

"The key to this thing is impressing upon that government that they've got to come to grips with what is causing this increase in violence and killing both Iraqis and our own armed forces," Warner said this month on Fox News.

Without a deadline, Maliki will not tackle the difficult problem of bridging Sunni and Shiite political disagreements, said Michael Rubin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute and a former Coalition Provisional Authority official.

"Maliki will not hit the benchmarks, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't give them," said Rubin, who does not favor troop withdrawals as a penalty. "Iraqis approach deadlines by doing nothing until two days before, and then locking themselves in smoke-filled rooms and only then do they ... try to hash out a solution."

Officially, administration officials remain opposed to discussing deadlines.

Nevertheless, with the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad drafting a series of benchmarks for the Maliki government, there were signs last week that the administration had eased its opposition to timetables and might take a tougher stance with the Iraqi government.

Former Pentagon official Campbell said that military officers would not be discussing their change of heart over timetables if administration officials had not signaled a new willingness to shift positions.

"Even though there are deep reservoirs of unhappiness in the military about certain aspects of administration policy, active-duty guys are very reluctant to publicly disagree with the leadership," he said.

"But the signals are clear from the administration that it is acceptable to talk about timetables. They are taking their cues from their civilian masters."

Back Story

The debate over timetables, timelines and deadlines as terms in U.S. policy on Iraq heated up a week ago, when U.S. Ambassador to Iraq Zalmay Khalilzad outlined a series of political milestones he said the Iraqi government had agreed to.

Khalilzad said Iraqi and U.S. officials had agreed to a timeline covering the sharing of oil revenue, establishment of a reconciliation program, and a plan to confront the sectarian militias.

The following day Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri Maliki seemed to reject Khalilzad's benchmarks, saying "we do not believe in a timetable."

The White House insisted that Maliki had been misunderstood. But in a meeting with Khalilzad on Friday, Maliki asserted his independence and called the U.S. tone patronizing.

However, in a joint statement released after the meeting, Maliki and Khalilzad agreed to a timeline for various political reforms and reasserted the U.S. commitment to helping Iraq.

On Saturday, President Bush and Maliki held a 50-minute air-clearing session in a videoconference between Washington and Baghdad.

Washington - A classified briefing prepared two weeks ago by the United States Central Command portrays Iraq as edging toward chaos, in a chart that the military is using as a barometer of civil conflict.

A one-page slide shown at the Oct. 18 briefing provides a rare glimpse into how the military command that oversees the war is trying to track its trajectory, particularly in terms of sectarian fighting.

The slide includes a color-coded bar chart that is used to illustrate an "Index of Civil Conflict." It shows a sharp escalation in sectarian violence since the bombing of a Shiite shrine in Samarra in February, and tracks a further worsening this month despite a concerted American push to tamp down the violence in Baghdad.

In fashioning the index, the military is weighing factors like the ineffectual Iraqi police and the dwindling influence of moderate religious and political figures, rather than more traditional military measures such as the enemy's fighting strength and the control of territory.

The conclusions the Central Command has drawn from these trends are not encouraging, according to a copy of the slide that was obtained by The New York Times. The slide shows Iraq as moving sharply away from "peace," an ideal on the far left side of the chart, to a point much closer to the right side of the spectrum, a red zone marked "chaos." As depicted in the command's chart, the needle has been moving steadily toward the far right of the chart.

An intelligence summary at the bottom of the slide reads "urban areas experiencing 'ethnic cleansing' campaigns to consolidate control" and "violence at all-time high, spreading geographically." According to a Central Command official, the index on civil strife has been a staple of internal command briefings for most of this year. The analysis was prepared by the command's intelligence directorate, which is overseen by Brig. Gen. John M. Custer.

Gen. John P. Abizaid, who heads the command, warned publicly in August about the risk of civil war in Iraq, but he said then that he thought it could be averted. In evaluating the prospects for all-out civil strife, the command concentrates on "key reads," or several principal variables.

According to the slide from the Oct. 18 briefing, the variables include "hostile rhetoric" by political and religious leaders, which can be measured by listening to sermons at mosques and to important Shiite and Sunni leaders, and the amount of influence that moderate political and religious figures have over the population. The other main variables are assassinations and other especially provocative sectarian attacks, as well as "spontaneous mass civil conflict."

A number of secondary indicators are also taken into account, including activity by militias, problems with ineffective police, the ability of Iraqi officials to govern effectively, the number of civilians who have been forced to move by sectarian violence, the willingness of Iraqi security forces to follow orders, and the degree to which the Iraqi Kurds are pressing for independence from the central government.

These factors are evaluated to create the index of civil strife, which has registered a steady worsening for months. "Ever since the February attack on the Shiite mosque in Samarra, it has been closer to the chaos side than the peace side," said a Central Command official who asked not to be identified because he was talking about classified information.

In the Oct. 18 brief, the index moved still another notch toward "chaos." That briefing was prepared three days before General Abizaid met in Washington with President Bush, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and Gen. Peter Pace, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, to take stock of the situation in Iraq.

A spokesman for the Central Command declined to comment on the index or other information in the slide. "We don't comment on secret material," the spokesman said.

One significant factor in the military's decision to move the scale toward "chaos" was the expanding activity by militias.

Another reason was the limitations of Iraqi government security forces, which despite years of training and equipping by the United States, are either ineffective or, in some cases, infiltrated by the very militias they are supposed to be combating. The slide notes that "ineffectual" Iraqi police forces have been a significant problem, and cites as a concern sectarian conflicts between Iraqi security forces.

Other significant factors are in the political realm. The slide notes that Iraq's political and religious leaders have lost some of their moderating influence over their constituents or adherents.

Notably, the slide also cites difficulties that the new Iraqi administration has experienced in "governance." That appears to be shorthand for the frustration felt by American military officers about the Iraqi government's delays in bringing about a genuine political reconciliation between Shiites and Sunnis. It also appears to apply to the lack of reconstruction programs to restore essential services and the dearth of job creation efforts to give young Iraqis an alternative to joining militias, as well as the absence of firm action against militias.

The slide lists other factors that are described as important but less significant. They include efforts by Iran and Syria to enable violence by militias and insurgent groups and the interest by many Kurds in achieving independence. The slide describes violence motivated by sectarian differences as having moved into a "critical" phase.

The chart does note some positive developments. Specifically, it notes that "hostile rhetoric" by political and religious leaders has not increased. It also notes that Iraqi security forces are refusing less often than in the past to take orders from the central government and that there has been a drop-off in mass desertions.

Still, for a military culture that thrives on PowerPoint briefings, the shifting index was seen by some officials as a stark warning about the difficult course of events in Iraq, and mirrored growing concern by some military officers.