BAGHDAD, Iraq (Reuters) - Iraq said Thursday the United States' latest report on human-rights conditions abroad was a bid to "terrorize" foes into submitting to its will.

"The State Department has released a long report on the human rights situation in the world appointing itself ... a supervisor of these rights," the Iraqi Foreign Ministry said in a statement carried by the official news agency INA.

"The report on human rights is used to intimidate, terrorize and exercise pressure on those who refuse to submit to U.S. demands. ... As for supporters and followers, criticism and accusations are meant only to remind and warn them."

The annual U.S. human rights report, released this week on the State Department's Web site (www.state.gov), evaluated human rights conditions in a number of countries around the world.

The U.S. report called Iraq's human rights record "extremely poor." It said President Saddam Hussein's government "has reacted with extreme repression against those who oppose or even question it" and that "security forces committed widespread, serious and systematic human rights abuses."

The report noted that "perceived political opponents" were summarily executed and that the government tortured Iraqis for a variety of alleged misdeeds. The report also noted severe restrictions on freedom of speech, press, assembly, association, religion and movement.

The report was criticized by countries, including Iraq, China and Russia, that it accused of human rights abuses. The Vietnamese Foreign Ministry criticized the report as unacceptable interference in the internal affairs of other countries.

The Iraqi Foreign Ministry statement said the United States was using the "noble" issue of human rights to serve policies that could not be described as noble.

It listed what it called "hideous U.S. acts," including CIA involvement in toppling foreign governments, alleged pro-Israeli bias and the use of uranium-tipped weapons in the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq and NATO's 1999 air war against Yugoslavia.

"The use of depleted uranium munitions and the imposition of illegal and illegitimate no-fly zones (over Iraq) bear stark evidence to the aggressiveness of this administration and its violation of basic human rights," the ministry added.

Iraq for years has maintained that depleted uranium has caused a rise in cancer cases in the wake of the six-week war over Kuwait in January-February 1991.

The United States and Britain enforce no-fly zones in southern and northern Iraq set up after the Gulf War to protect Shiite Muslims in the south and a Kurdish enclave in the north from possible attack by the Iraqi army.

Iraq remains under U.N. sanctions imposed for its 1990 invasion of Kuwait that led to the Gulf War. Growing support among Arab countries and some major powers including France and Russia for a loosening or abolition of the sanctions regime is opposed by the United States.

"Violation of human rights laws and agreements has become customary behavior of American administrations," the ministry statement said.

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