Cairo - Governments in the Middle East continue to lag behind the rest of the world in their adherence to human rights, Amnesty International said in its annual report Wednesday.

The report said the region had failed to keep pace with Africa, the Americas and Europe "in developing effective legal frameworks and enforcement systems" for the protection of human rights.

One reason for this was the continuing state of war between Israel and its Arab neighbours, the London-based human rights watchdog said.

"The international community's failure to end Israel's military occupation of the Palestinian territories, and to ensure a durable solution which recognizes and guarantees the fundamental rights of both Israelis and Palestinians, throws a dark shadow over the wider region, and remains a potential source of regional or global confrontation," the report said.

Amnesty pointed out that governments in the region continue to focus on "state security" and "public safety" to the detriment of human rights, and the lives of their citizens.

Five years after the US-led invasion of Iraq, "more than 60,000 people were being detained without trial by the US-led Multinational Force and the Iraqi authorities," it said.

Egyptian authorities were reported to be holding 18,000 administrative detainees, although the Interior Ministry contends the number is no more than 1,500.

"The Saudi Arabian government disclosed that 9,000 people had been detained since 2003, more than 3,000 of whom continued to be held in July 2007. The Israeli government held more than 800 Palestinians as administrative detainees," according to the study.

Most governments in the Middle East and North Africa maintain close controls on freedom of expression and targeted journalists and others whose statements and writings they deemed too critical or subversive, it added.

State authorities brought criminal defamation charges against journalists and bloggers in Algeria, Egypt, Morocco, Tunisia, the United Arab Emirates and Yemen.

"In Iran, journalists were jailed for expressing opinions; in Iraq, they were murdered by shadowy armed groups. In many countries, those who expressed dissent and political and human rights activists faced arrest and imprisonment, harassment and intimidation at the hands of state authorities," it said.

The report said violence against women remained widespread and deep-seated, often a product of prevailing social and cultural norms.

"In Egypt, almost 250 women were reported to have been killed in the first half of 2007 by violent husbands or other family members; on average two women were raped every hour and genital mutilation of girls was widely practised despite now being totally illegal."

"Honour killings" continued to be perpetrated in Jordan, Syria and elsewhere. In southern Iraq women were killed by Shiite militants for breaking strict dress and morality codes, it said.

However, the report singled out two encouraging developments, where leading Muslim clerics - Syria's Grand Mufti Ahmed Badreddin Hassoun and Lebanon's most senior Shi'a cleric, Ayatollah Mohammed Hussein Fadlallah - both spoke out firmly against "honour crimes" and other violence against women, denouncing such abuses as un-Islamic.

Amnesty International cautioned that the biggest threat to the future of human rights is the absence of a shared vision and collective leadership.

"Today, hope for reform lies primarily with the growing generation of young people in the region, who increasingly ask why they cannot access or enjoy their inalienable human rights.

The growing reach of satellite broadcasting and rising internet usage, means the space for debate cannot now so readily be closed down," the group said. (dpa)