Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki said Sunday he has ordered a halt to the U.S. construction of a wall that would separate a Sunni enclave from surrounding Shia areas in Baghdad, declaring thereare other ways to protect the neighbourhood.

The announcement came amid criticism at home over the project, and while the beleaguered Shia leader was in Egypt to drum up support from mostly Sunni Arab nations for his efforts to stop the sectarian violence in his country.

The U.S. military announced last week it was building a large concrete wall in the northern Azamiyah section of Baghdad to protect the minority Sunnis from attacks by Shias living nearby.

Residents and Sunni leaders complained the barrier would isolate their community and a large protest was scheduledMonday in the area.

In his first public comments on the issue, al-Maliki said he had ordered the construction to stop.

"I oppose the building of the wall and its construction will stop," al-Maliki said during a joint news conference with Amr Moussa, the secretary general of the Arab League, in Cairo, Egypt. "There are other methods to protect neighbourhoods."

He did not elaborate but added "this wall reminds us of other walls," in an apparent reference to the one that divided the German city of Berlin during the Cold War.

The U.S. military offered no comment, saying only that the issue would be addressed Monday.

In October, U.S. forces pulled down roadblocks around Baghdad's eastern slum of Sadr City hours after an order from al-Maliki, who draws key support from the fiery anti-American cleric Muqtada al-Sadr who has made the neighbourhood a stronghold.

Earlier Sunday, the Sunni Iraqi Islamic Party denounced the wall's construction.

"Dividing the capital of Iraq in this way will be the starting point for dividing Iraq at the pretext of imposing law and security," it said.

Last week, the military said in a statementthat U.S. soldiers had begun building afive-kilometre wall to protect the minority community on the eastern side of the Tigris River.

Gated community

The wall would turn Azamiyah into a gated community withtraffic control points manned by Iraqi soldiers, it said, stressing that the decision had been made in co-ordination with the Iraqis.

It said the concrete wall, including barriers as tall as 3.6 metres "is one of the centrepieces of a new strategy by coalition and Iraqi forces to break the cycle of sectarian violence" in Baghdad.

U.S. and Iraqi forces have long erected cement barriers around marketplaces and coalition bases and outposts in Baghdad and other Iraqi cities, such as Ramadi in an effort to prevent attacks, including suicide car bombs.

American forces also have constructed huge sand barriers around towns such as Tal Afar, an insurgent stronghold near the Syrian border.

But many residents were alarmed by the plan, and said they had not been consulted.

"This will make the whole district a prison. This is collective punishment on the residents of Azamiyah," said Ahmed al-Dulaimi, a 41-year-old engineer who lives in the area.