By Ross Colvin

BAGHDAD, Feb 1 (Reuters) Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al- Maliki is pressing Washington to give his military more weapons, with ordinary soldiers complaining they are often outgunned by heavily armed militants.

''We have shortages in all our equipment,'' said one Iraqi soldier today as he monitored traffic near Baghdad's Habibiya district.

Pointing to the plastic butt of his cheaply made AK-47 rifle, he said: ''Just look at this. How can we fight terrorists using rocket-propelled grenades with small arms?'' While Maliki has not spelt out exactly what is on his shopping list, the US military says the weapons in Iraq's armoury are ''suitable for the current threat it faces''.

But the Iraq Study Group suggested otherwise in its December report to President George W Bush proposing a change of American strategy in Iraq.

''Units lack equipment,'' the high-level bipartisan panel said. ''They cannot carry out their missions without adequate equipment. Congress has been generous in funding requests for US troops but it has resisted fully funding Iraqi forces.

''The entire appropriation for the 2006 financial year (3 billion dollar) is less than the United States currently spends in Iraq every two weeks,'' it said.

The US military says Congress has appropriated about 15 billion dollars since 2004 to build, train, equip and sustain Iraq's security forces, which now number about 323,000. An additional 4 billion dollars has been requested to fund their expansion.

But the weekend battle between Iraqi forces and gunmen who the Iraqi authorities said belonged to a messianic Muslim cult near the holy city of Najaf was a reminder of the Iraqi army's dependence on US firepower. The battle ended only after the army called in US reinforcements, including tanks, helicopters and jet fighters.

Despite that reliance, the Iraqi government says it is not looking for tanks and helicopters, but more ''medium weapons'' such as heavy machineguns, rocket-propelled grenade launchers and armoured vehicles.

''We don't want tanks. We don't want weapons to launch a war.

We just want weapons that will help us get the terrorists,'' government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh told Reuters.

The US military declined Reuters' requests for specific comment on Maliki's appeals but says it plans to supply more than 500 new heavy machine guns, 600 armoured Humvees and 300 armoured personnel carriers in the coming months.

REPEATED REQUESTS Maliki told Reuters last October some police units had to share rifles but that if the equipment problems were addressed Iraqi security forces could quell violence within six months.

He has raised the issue repeatedly with US officials, from Bush himself to House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi, a Democrat who opposes the war, when she visited last week.

A major report by the respected US think tank Brookings Institution last year said the US military faced a dilemma in providing the best equipment to Iraqi units.

''Iraqi soldiers frequently sell their equipment on the black market. The result is that they no longer have the equipment and it generally ends up in the hands of organised crime, the militias, or the insurgency,'' it said.

''Consequently, coalition personnel must choose between properly equipping their Iraqi charges and risk having much of the gear disappear, or giving them lower quality equipment that they will find hard to sell, but in so doing, deprive them of the wherewithal to succeed.'' Although that report was written last February, another Iraqi soldier at the Habibiya checkpoint in Baghdad suggested not much had changed in the intervening months.

''The Americans have promised they will get us better weapons, but they never bring them. They still don't trust us, they think we'll use them against them,'' he said, before stopping a minibus and checking passengers for identification.

REUTERS AKJ HT1948