The US says it has arrested a senior al-Qaeda operative on his way to Iraq to plan future attacks.
A Pentagon spokesperson said Abd al Hadi al-Iraqi had links to militant leaders in Afghanistan and Pakistan, and has now been taken to Guantanamo Bay.
The official said he was arrested by the CIA while he was travelling to Iraq to take over al-Qaeda operations and plot attacks against Western interests.
Separately, all eight Democratic Party candidates for next year's US presidential election have criticised President George W Bush's policy in Iraq.
They were appearing in the first televised debate of the campaign, shortly after major political developments in Washington.
The US House of Representatives narrowly passed a bill yesterday, making further funding for the war in Iraq conditional on a gradual withdrawal of American troops beginning later this year.
President Bush said he will veto the legislation next week.
The debate was held in the key early primary state of South Carolina.
The party's front-runner, Senator Hillary Clinton, was forced to defend her initial vote to support the US invasion of Iraq in 2003.
She told the audience that if she knew then what she knew now she would have acted differently.
The other leading candidate, Senator Barack Obama, described the situation in Iraq as disastrous.
He said Republicans needed to support Democrats to overturn the presidential veto.
