Condoleezza Rice gave little ground to senators lambasting US policies in Iraq on the first day of her confirmation hearing to be secretary of state and will return yesterday for a second round of questioning.

President George W. Bush’s national security adviser defended herself on Tuesday against a charge she put loyalty above truthfulness in making her boss’s case for going to war against Iraq and clashed with senators over an exit strategy.

Sen. Joe Biden of Delaware, the ranking Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, which held the hearing, dismissed as “malarkey” a figure of 120,000 trained Iraqis cited by Rice. He said the number was 4,000.

In the most heated exchange, California Democrat Sen. Barbara Boxer all but accused Rice of lying to argue the case for war. “I personally believe ... that your loyalty to the mission you were given, to sell this war, overwhelmed your respect for the truth,” Boxer told Rice, citing statements about how fast former dictator Saddam Hussein might acquire a nuclear weapon.

Rice responded: “I have never, ever, lost respect for the truth in the service of anything.”Her voice appearing to quaver with emotion as she looked directly at Boxer, she repeatedly asked the senator not to question her integrity.

Rice insisted it was right to invade Iraq and steadfastly defended as sufficient the US troop levels after President Saddam Hussein was toppled, even though a tenacious insurgency quickly took root.

<B>“Cross-examination”</B>

After more than nine hours of testimony, Democrats insisted the “cross-examination” resume on Wednesday, when – despite the criticism – her nomination is expected to be easily approved.

The Republican-led Senate will then confirm her as the first black woman secretary of state, probably today, the day of Bush’s inauguration for a second four-year term.

Bush has chosen the 50-year-old former Stanford university provost to replace Colin Powell, widely admired abroad and often seen as the Cabinet’s lone dove stressing diplomacy to solve crises.

Unlike Powell, who often seemed out of step with the White House, Rice is one of the president’s closest confidantes.

Stepping out from her behind-the-scenes adviser’s role, Rice broke no new ground on Tuesday on policies for the top foreign policy challenges, including Iran, North Korea an the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

ABU GHRAIB SCANDAL

<B>Outrage over Iraq photos</B>

■ Newspapers have published pictures of Iraqis apparently being abused by British soldiers under “Shame” and “Shock” headlines, in echoes of the Abu Ghraib scandal that badly damaged the standing of the US military. Some of the front-page pictures showed naked Iraqi prisoners appearing to be forced to simulate anal and other sexual acts, while in another a soldier had his fist raised above a bound detainee who had a net over his torso.

“They are pictures to make us sick with shame,” said the top-selling Sun, as newspapers and opposition politicians warned of long-term damage to the image of Britain’s military hours after the court martial of three soldiers began. The Times said the pictures would “provoke outrage in the Arab world and sully the reputation of the British Army”. Some newspapers said Prime Minister Tony Blair, US President George W. Bush’s closest ally on Iraq, could be hit politically as he prepares to call a general election, widely expected in May. The emergence of the pictures prompted Britain’s most senior general, Sir Mike Jackson, to make a rare public statement in which he said: “We condemn utterly all acts of abuse. Where there is evidence of abuse, this is immediately investigated.”

The pictures, released by prosecutors at the court martial at a British military base in Germany on Tuesday, were discovered when laboratory technicians phoned police after a soldier took them to be developed. The three British soldiers pleaded not guilty to numerous counts of abuse, although one admitted assaulting a man.

Taken just weeks after the March 2003 US-led invasion of Iraq toppled Saddam Hussein, one of the 22 pictures showed an Iraqi man trussed up in a net and suspended from the prongs of a fork-lift truck. Another showed a soldier apparently simulating a kick on a bound Iraqi lying in a patch of water. Prosecutors say the soldiers carried out offences during an operation codenamed “Ali Baba” to stop looting at an aid food depot in the chaotic weeks after the US-led invasion. The trial is the latest in a series of hearings against US and British soldiers after photographs of abuse by US troops at Baghdad’s Abu Ghraib jail emerged last year, sparking worldwide outrage.

Unlike the Abu Ghraib scandal, the trial of the three British soldiers has not sparked allegations of systematic abuse. But Sir Menzies Campbell, a spokesman for Britain’s second largest opposition party, the Liberal Democrats, told Channel Four television: “These pictures will inevitably open all wounds and be part of drawing parallels with Abu Ghraib.”

<B>Saul Hudson and Arshad Mohammed</B>