(Updates with U.S. comments)

By Adrian Croft

BAGHDAD, May 21 (Reuters) - Hundreds of children held by U.S. forces in Iraq should be given immediate access to lawyers and have their cases reviewed promptly by an independent judicial body, a rights group said on Wednesday.

Human Rights Watch said U.S. military authorities were holding 513 Iraqi children as of May 12 as "imperative threats to security".

Since the March 2003 U.S.-led invasion, the United States has detained 2,400 children under the age of 18 in Iraq, including some as young as 10, it said.

Child detainees were sometimes interrogated over days or weeks by military units in the field before being sent to main detention centres and had no real opportunity to challenge their detention, the human rights group said.

"The vast majority of children detained in Iraq languish for months in U.S. military custody," said Clarisa Bencomo, a researcher for Human Rights Watch.

"The U.S. should provide these children with immediate access to lawyers and an independent judicial review of their detention," she said.

Human Rights Watch made the criticisms a day before the U.N. Committee on the Rights of the Child meets in Geneva to review U.S. compliance with an international treaty on children in armed conflict. The treaty requires states to help with the recovery and reintegration of children under their control.

Responding to Human Rights Watch, a U.S. military spokesman said U.S. forces currently held fewer than 500 children in Iraq.

Youths charged under Iraqi law received access to legal counsel. "Those who are not referred to the Iraqi criminal courts do not have legal counsel because they are not charged with a crime," said Major Matthew Morgan, a spokesman for U.S. detention facilities in Iraq.

REVIEW

He said all detainees' cases were reviewed by independent attorneys within seven days. After an initial review, the cases of child detainees were reviewed every 120 days.

On Tuesday, U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Zalmay Khalilzad accused Iraqi militants of using children to attack government and coalition forces, forcing authorities to detain them.

Human Rights Watch urged the United States to release any children detained for more than a year, to separate very young and other vulnerable children from other detainees, and to allow U.N. and other independent monitors confidential access to children in U.S. custody.

The military spokesman said there were currently no youths in U.S. custody who had been detained for more than a year and children were held separately from adults.

He said U.N. and other independent monitors had been told they may be permitted access to children in U.S. custody provided they agreed to confidentiality requirements, but they had so far refused to do so.

The United States is not a party to the U.N. Convention on the Rights of the Child but has signed two optional protocols on trafficking in children and on children in armed conflict.

"There is nothing in the optional protocol that prevents the detention of individuals under the age of 18, so the United States is in full compliance with its treaty obligations," Sandra Hodgkinson, deputy assistant secretary for Detainee Affairs in the U.S. Department of Defense, told reporters in Geneva. (Additional reporting by Jonathan Lynn in Geneva; Editing by Giles Elgood)

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