Baghdad, Iraq ? In the latest proposal to curb the seemingly unstoppable violence in Baghdad, the Iraqi government is planning to build a defensive barrier around the city to keep out terrorists and militants who might be planning attacks.

Iraq’s Interior Ministry said Friday that the government wants to dig a trench encircling the capital. At a news conference in Washington, President Bush said at least part of the barrier would be a berm.

“The enemy is changing tactics, and we’re adapting,” Bush said. “And so they (U.S. and Iraqi security officials) have got a plan now, they’ve adapted. The enemy moves; we’ll help the Iraqis move. So they’re building a berm around the city to make it harder for people to come in with explosive devices, for example.”

In Baghdad, U.S. military spokesman Sgt. Jeremy Pitcher said Bush and the Iraqi government are talking about the same plan but could not give further details about the construction of the barrier.

“I know the Iraqi government said trench, and then President Bush said berm,” he said. “There will probably be dirt moving somewhere.”

The defensive plan would be a huge, difficult undertaking. Baghdad’s circumference runs roughly 100 miles, most reconstruction projects are languishing unfinished or unstarted because of security concerns, and the government still is struggling to assert its authority in the capital.

Interior Ministry spokesman Gen. Abdul Karim al-Kinani said the trench is part of the government’s plan launched in June to pacify Baghdad. The trench will be deep and wide enough to prevent cars from crossing, forcing all vehicles to go through the 28 access roads into the capital, he said.

Iraqi army soldiers stand guard with their armored vehicle on a deserted street during a prayer day vehicle ban Friday in Baghdad, Iraq. U.S. military and Iraqi security forces have begun a massive effort to seal off Baghdad with a ring of reinforced checkpoints, berms, trenches, barriers and fences, in an attempt to clamp down on insurgents, officials said.

“This trench : is going to be under our forces’ control in order to limit the terrorists’ access to Baghdad,” he said.

Berms have been used as a defensive measure in the past by the U.S. military, which built one last year around a village north of Baghdad and erected another along much of the Syrian border. U.S. officials say that berm has been successful in restricting the infiltration of foreign fighters into Iraq.

It is unclear, however, whether any kind of barrier would help to significantly reduce the level of violence in Baghdad. On a day when 51 bound and tortured bodies were found dumped on the city’s streets, bringing to about 130 the number found in the past three days, Sunni leaders accused Shiite militias based in the capital of carrying out the killings.

As in previous cases, most of the bodies were found bound, tortured and shot in the head, pointing to activity by the mysterious death squads that haunt Baghdad neighborhoods and which Sunni leaders say have ties to the Shiite-dominated Interior Ministry.

The trench – or berm – will be built in the third phase of the three-step security plan launched June 15 by the Iraqi government, he said. In the first phase, extra checkpoints were set up around the city, but the rate of killings increased.

The second phase began in early August and involved the deployment of additional U.S. troops to search and clear troubled Baghdad neighborhoods, mainly in the predominantly Sunni west of the city.

The third phase is intended to extend the operation into Shiite areas in the east.