Only days after slamming the US report as "interference in its internal affairs," the State Council, China's cabinet, countered with its own criticism.

Allegations of US atrocities in the wars on Iraq and Afghanistan led the way.

"In recent years, the United States has practiced unilateralism on the international stage, wantonly engaged in military adventures, violently invaded the sovereignty of other nations and left the mark of rights violations everywhere," the 2003 US Rights Violation Record said.

"Since the United States initiated the war on Iraq, 16,000 Iraqis have been killed including 10,000 citizens," the report said.

With a 400 billion dollar defense budget, US defense spending is bigger than military expenditures of the rest of the world combined, while the United States is the world's biggest seller of arms.

It was responsible for more than 48 percent of all conventional weapons sales to the developing world in 2002, the report said.

Rights violations were not only restricted to the 364,000 soldiers Washington has based in more than 130 countries, the report said, but also occurred at home where the United States remains one of the world's most violent places to live.

"The United States leads the world in gun ownership, guns are everywhere and crimes involving guns are on the rise," it said.

Of the 15,980 murders committed in the United States in 2001, 63 percent involved guns, while 56 percent, or 16,586 people, who committed suicide in the US in 2000 used guns, it said.