Iraq's US-installed Governing Council has voted to set up a special tribunal to try Saddam Hussein-era atrocities, officials said Wednesday, as the United States barred firms from countries who have refused to join the coalition from bidding for lucrative contracts.

The news of the tribunal to try crimes committed against Iraqis, Iranians and Kuwaitis after the Baath party seized power in 1968 came amid a further spate of attacks in US-occupied Iraq.

The long-awaited vote heralds the setting up of a court that would be staffed by Iraqi judges and based on Iraqi law but could also use foreign experts, Governing Council member Mowaffak al-Rubaie told AFP.

"The Governing Council approved late last night the creation of an Iraqi penal tribunal to try former members of Saddam Hussein's regime for their crimes against humanity," he said.

"These crimes include those committed against the Islamic Republic of Iran, against the state of Kuwait and against the Arab, Kurd, Turkmen, Assyrian, Shia and Sunni sons of the Iraqi people for the period from July 17, 1968, until May 1 of this year," said al-Rubaie.

Council members have said US overseer Paul Bremer has to sign the tribunal statutes, but a coalition spokesman has insisted it was the Governing Council that was taking the decisions about the court and not the US-led occupation authority.

Saddam and his henchmen stand accused of gassing Iranian forces during a 1980-1988 war as well as the Kurdish population, including thousands of women and children, and brutally repressing Shiite and Kurdish uprisings in the aftermath of the 1991 Gulf War. Tens of thousands of people also disappeared during his 24-year rule.

In a move that threatens to reignite the diplomatic row over the US occupation, the United States has decided to bar companies from countries whose governments have refused to send troops to Iraq from bidding for billions of dollars of contracts in the country.

This means that firms from Canada, France, Germany, Russia and other countries who steadfastly opposed the US-led war and occupation have been effectively frozen out of prime reconstruction deals.

Deputy Defence Secretary Paul Wolfowitz, in a decision dated December 5, cited "essential security interests" of the United States and the need to encourage countries to provide troops for Iraq as the reason for limiting competition for 18.6 billion dollars in prime contracts.

"It is necessary for the protection of the essential security interests of the United States to limit competition for the prime contracts of these procurements to companies from the United States, Iraq, coalition partners and force contributing nations," the Wolfowitz finding said.

The decision posted on a Pentagon website Tuesday lists 63 countries that are elegible to compete for some 26 prime contracts but conspicuously leaves out firms from the countries that have not sent in troops to support the reconstruction.

Also in Washington, General Richard Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, declared US-led forces were "clearly" winning the war in Iraq despite the continued attacks "I would say, we are winning. I mean, clearly we're winning," Myers said, sounding exasperated at a Pentagon press conference iover questions about the progress of the US-led effort in Iraq.

Myers said US commanders report a dramatic improvement in their ability to gather intelligence on insurgents and to specifically target groups that have been setting off bombs.

He added "we have had a real spike up in Iraqis coming foward to provide intelligence." More circumspect was US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, who cautioned that despite a recent drop in the number of attacks it was "a bit early to call it a trend." They spoke after 58 US soldiers and an Iraqi translator were wounded in a suicide car bomb attack Tuesday outside a US base in Tall Afar, near Mosul, despite the efforts of a US sentry, who fired almost 100 rounds as the vehicle accelerated towards the base.

"We were very fortunate," Lieutenant Colonel Christopher Pease told AFP. "If it were not for our force protection measures it would have been carnage." The blast blew a five-metre-deep crater in the road outside the guards' living quarters and hurled the engine block of the bomber's vehicle 250 metres (yards) to the other end of the compound.

A three-metre wall in front the building was flattened and sandbags in the windows blown in, showering the soldiers inside with flying debris and glass.

About two hours after the Americans were attacked, three Muslims died and two were wounded when a bomb exploded in the courtyard of a Sunni mosque after morning prayers in the capital, police said.

Near the flashpoint town of Fallujah, just west of Baghdad, ground fire forced a US reconnaissance helicopter to make an emergency landing Tuesday afternoon, a military spokesman said. The two-man crew walked away with minor injuries.

In other incidents, two US soldiers were wounded in a drive-by shooting in Mosul, while a would-be suicide bomber killed himself north of Baghdad after failing to penetrate an American military compound.

Meanwhile the Iranian opposition People's Mujahedeen, disarmed and detained by US forces, rejected a decision by Iraq's interim leaders to expel its thousands of militants from the country by the end of the year.

The Mujahedeen, who ran a low-level armed campaign against the Islamic Republic of Iran from bases along the border in Iraq under Saddam Hussein's protection, suggested the US-appointed council did not have the power or legal right to take such a decision - Sapa-AFP