Signs that the US is still struggling to put together a viable draft UN resolution on Iraq continue to emerge a day after three more of its soldiers were killed as chaos spread through Baghdad.
Former Iraqi intelligence officers hurled stones and charged American forces guarding occupation headquarters in the capital while in another part of the city troops fired concussion grenades and live rounds at Shi'ite demonstrating against the closure of a mosque and the alleged arrest of the imam.
Elsewhere, there was an explosion inside the Foreign Ministry compound about a half mile from the confrontation outside the US-led occupation headquarters.
By nightfall, an estimated 200 American troops backed by helicopters and at least six M1A2 tanks had sealed off the area. As the midnight curfew approached, however, the standoff eased, with the Americans pulling back most of their forces.
The protests came within 24 hours of three US soldiers being killed in roadside bombings. One was killed just west of Baghdad while another two more in a similar ambush. An Iraqi translator was also killed in the attack.
In a separate incident, two infantrymen were wounded in a bombing in al-Haswah, 25 miles south of the capital, while three more were slightly wounded in a roadside bombing of a US convoy in Tikrit.
Meanwhile, at the UN in New York, US Ambassador Mr John Negroponte gave differing signals on a resolution that will attempt to account for Secretary-General Kofi Annan's refusal to commit the organisation to a political role in Iraq while the US and Britain are still the occupying powers.
At Monday's closed-door council meeting, Mr Negroponte said he made clear that any revised text would not vary much from the current draft.
He refused to indicate a timeframe for finalising the draft text but President Bush wants a vote before the October 23-24 Iraq donor's conference in Madrid.
Many council members have called on the 15 nations to unite on the future critical steps in postwar Iraq, and some have privately expressed concern at the message a split vote would send.
AP &