Iraq's interior minister dismissed reports of prisoner abuse at a secret Baghdad bunker today.
But less than two hours after Interior Minister Bayan Jabor tried to justify his ministry's actions in the case of 170 men found half starving and beaten in a ministry compound, the US embassy denounced such abuses.
"We do not tolerate any abuse of detainees in Iraq. Even one case is too much, anywhere," embassy spokesman Jim Bullock said.
His statement appeared to be a direct response to Mr Jabor, who earlier not only played down the affair but also contradicted Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari, who was one of the first to acknowledge that abuses had taken place at the prison.
Mr Jaafari has ordered an investigation, and the United Nations has also called for a thorough examination of the affair.
The bunker was discovered by US forces during a raid on Sunday. Inside they found 173 men and teenage boys, many of them malnourished, beaten and showing signs of torture.
"The talk about this has been inaccurate," a defiant Mr Jabor told a packed news conference, his first public appearance since the scandal broke, adding that he had only commented on the issue because his aides had pressured him to do so. He dismissed accusations that he had condoned torture.
He said only a handful of prisoners appeared to have been beaten. "There were only five, or at most seven, who showed signs of having been beaten," he said. "I don't accept for any officer to even slap a prisoner."
Pentagon officials admitted on Tuesday that US troops used white phosphorus as a weapon against insurgent strongholds during the battle of Falluja last November.
At the same time, they denied an Italian television news report that the spontaneously flammable material had been used against civilians.