The United Nations called for Afghan human rights investigators to be allowed into Bagram, the main U.S. base in Afghanistan, after The New York Times reported poorly trained U.S. soldiers there had repeatedly abused prisoners.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai, on the eve of his meeting today with President Bush in Washington, said he was angry about the reported abuse and called for more Afghan control over the operations of the 16,700 U.S. troops in his country, as well as punishment for any U.S. soldiers who mistreat prisoners.

Also on Sunday, an Afghan government spokesman said a kidnapped Italian aid worker, Clementina Cantoni, is alive and healthy and that Afghan officials are in contact with her kidnappers to secure her release. The announcement came two days after reports quoting the purported kidnapper as saying he had killed her because the government did not agree to his demands.

Saturday's fighting in eastern Paktika province left one U.S. soldier slightly wounded. Spokesman Lt. Col. Jerry O'Hara said rebels had sneaked across the border from Pakistan and had opened fire on American and Afghan forces.

Maj. Gen. Shaukat Sultan, a Pakistani military spokesman, said shells from the fighting landed in Pakistan, and that no one was hurt there. But a Pakistani intelligence official in the area said that villagers had retrieved the bodies of five unidentified men.

After a winter lull, loyalists of the ousted Taliban regime and other militants opposed to Karzai's U.S.-backed government have ramped up their insurgency.

The latest violence came as Karzai prepared to meet Bush in Washington, where the two leaders are expected to discuss the prisoner abuse allegations among other topics.

The New York Times on Sunday detailed fresh allegations of mistreatment of prisoners by U.S. forces, citing the Army's criminal investigation into the deaths of two Afghans at the Bagram base north of the capital Kabul in December 2002.

In Texas, U.S. soldier Spc. Brian E. Cammack was sentenced in a court-martial on Friday to three months in prison after pleading guilty to the 2002 attack on prisoner Mullah Habibullah in Afghanistan. Cammack, a member of the Army Reserve's 377th Military Police Company in Cincinnati, said he was angry when he struck the prisoner twice in the thigh with his knee. The prisoner had allegedly spit on his chest.

In a plea bargain, Army prosecutors agreed not to pursue a charge of maltreatment against Cammack, who agreed to testify in other cases related to the deaths of two inmates at Bagram. He will be demoted to private, fined more than $3,200 and given a bad-conduct discharge.

Karzai - often viewed by critics as an American puppet - insisted that abusers be punished.

''This is simply not acceptable,'' he told CNN. ''We are angry about this. We want justice. We want the people responsible for this sort of brutal behavior punished and tried and made public.''