Arabic news channels showed live coverage of a U.S. congressional hearing on the handling of the Iraqi prisoner abuse scandal on Friday, but few watchers thought Washington was determined to stop abuses.

Al Jazeera, Al Arabiya and U.S.-funded Alhurra had simultaneous translation of the hearings, in which Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld apologized to the abuse victims but said he would not resign.

The Arab reaction was similar to that which greeted U.S. President Bush's televised pledge on Wednesday to punish Americans who abused and killed Iraqi prisoners.

Many said the gesture was too little, too late.

Al Arabiya showed pictures of the alleged abuse next to shots of the Rumsfeld hearing, including one showing a female American soldier holding a leash around the neck of a naked Iraqi lying on the floor.

"The Americans are playing God and they don't want to be answerable to anybody. This is really shameful," said Jassem Ali Hussein, watching the broadcast in a restaurant in the Bahraini capital Manama.

"It (hearing) is not going to stop torture completely but the Americans are going to be more careful," he said.

Of the 47,000 respondents to a poll carried out on Al Jazeera's Web site alongside the hearing, 87.4 percent said the United States would be unable to improve its image tainted by the abuse scandal which has infuriated Arabs and Muslims.

Photographs of Iraqi prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison outside Baghdad reinforced Arab skepticism about the U.S. argument that the aim of invading Iraq was to end human rights abuses and bring about a new era of freedom and democracy for Iraqis.

Rumsfeld offered his "deepest apology" to the victims.

"These events occurred on my watch as secretary of defense. I am accountable for them. I take full responsibility," he told the Senate Armed Services Committee.

Source: (China Daily/Agencies)