UNITED NATIONS, Feb 10 (Reuters) - A journalism watchdog called on President Barack Obama on Tuesday to halt open-ended detentions of journalists by the U.S. military, saying they encouraged similar action by repressive governments.

The New York-based Committee to Protect Journalists also called for fuller investigations of the deaths of journalists killed by U.S. forces.

The group's chairman, Paul Steiger, told a news conference that U.S. support for journalists' right to do their work without being shot at or imprisoned had slipped in recent years under the administration of former President George W. Bush.

"America has always stood as a beacon for freedom of the press, and I think it would be a great time for a new administration coming in to reaffirm those principles," he said.

The Obama administration, which took office last month, should pledge to "take care to investigate the deaths of journalists from fire by American troops and to make sure that this is indeed accidental and to end the practice of long-term incarceration of journalists without charge, such as has regrettably gone on in Iraq in recent years," Steiger added.

The committee made public a letter Steiger sent to Obama on Jan. 12 saying the U.S. military had detained 14 journalists for long periods without due process in Iraq, Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Of these, all were eventually released without charge except for Ibrahim Jassam Mohammed, an Iraqi freelance photographer working for Reuters, who was detained in Iraq last September.

A U.S. military spokesman said in December it was not obliged to release Jassam despite an Iraqi Central Criminal Court ruling that there was no evidence against him. The spokesman said intelligence listed Jassam as a security threat.

DUE PROCESS

Such detentions violated the U.S. military's own commitment to review journalist cases within 36 hours of detention, Steiger said in the letter.

"I believe the abolition of the practice of detaining journalists for prolonged periods without due process would send a clear signal that the United States upholds its long-standing commitment to free expression," he said.

The committee's executive director, Joel Simon, said U.S. detentions of journalists had "emboldened autocratic regimes around the world who justified their own detention of journalists on vague security charges."

He also said the U.S. military had been responsible for the deaths of 16 journalists in Iraq.

"We do not believe that these are deliberate attacks on the media but they have not been adequately investigated and that is a point we continue to insist on," Simon said.

CPJ's annual report "Attacks on the Press," listed 41 journalists killed worldwide in 2008 because of their work.

That was a sharp drop from the 65 killed in 2007, largely because of a decline in violence in Iraq, where 11 journalists were killed in 2008, compared with 32 the previous year.

In an introduction to the report, Simon said some countries had "opportunistically and cynically embraced the Bush administration's war-on-terror rhetoric to justify repressive policies." He cited action against journalists in Colombia, China, Eritrea and Cuba.

"President Barack Obama must recognize that whenever the United States fails to uphold press freedom at home or on the battlefield, its actions ripple across the world," he said. (Editing by Chris Wilson)

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