Newsweek should help repair damage says US

WASHINGTON - The White House has called on Newsweek magazine to help repair damage to the US image in the Muslim world from its false report that American interrogators at Guantanamo Bay desecrated the Koran.

Newsweek retracted the report, saying it could not substantiate a May 9 article contending that an internal military investigation had uncovered Koran abuse. The report said interrogators at the US military prison in Cuba had flushed at least one copy of the Muslim holy book down a toilet to try to make detainees talk.

White House spokesman Scott McClellan called the retraction a good first step, but said the newsweekly should "help repair the damage that has been done, particularly in the region", by explaining "what happened and why they got it wrong". He offered few specifics.

"They can also talk about policies and practices of the United States military. Our United States military goes out of its way to treat the holy Koran with great care and respect," McClellan said.

But McClellan acknowledged that "it's not my position to get into telling people what they can and cannot report".

The US military's Southern Command, responsible for the prison for foreign terrorism suspects at the naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, began a fact-finding inquiry last week in the aftermath of the Newsweek report.

It is reviewing roughly 31,000 documents such as day-to-day log entries to check whether US personnel at Guantanamo ever threw the Koran in a toilet, but was conducting no interviews as part of the effort, the Pentagon said.

Chief Pentagon spokesman Lawrence Di Rita did not say when the inquiry would be completed but said it should be soon.

Former Guantanamo prisoners and lawyers for detainees have for months accused US personnel at Guantanamo of putting the Koran into toilets. Di Rita said the Pentagon did not investigate those earlier allegations when they were made because they were not considered credible.

"I'm not aware that we've ever had any specific, credible allegations to investigate. We certainly didn't investigate detainees' lawyers on television saying, 'This is what happened to my detainee'," Di Rita said.

Asked whether he believed detainees who were making the allegations were lying, Di Rita said, "I think it's very likely. But we haven't investigated them."

With anti-American sentiment already strong in the Muslim world because of the US-led invasion of Iraq and ensuing prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, the report sparked violent protests -- in Afghanistan, where 16 were killed and more than 100 injured, Pakistan, Indonesia and Gaza.

In the past week the reported desecration was condemned in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Malaysia and by the Arab League.

America's image had already been tarnished in many parts of the Arab world and Washington has sought to rebuild trust among Muslims as violence continues in Iraq and following last year's disclosures that US guards at Abu Ghraib physically and sexually abused Iraqi prisoners.

Resentment has also simmered among Arabs because of the more than 500 prisoners being held for up to 3-1/2 years at Guantanamo who were captured during the US war in Afghanistan.

Officials said the State Department sent a cable to all US diplomatic posts worldwide on Monday to alert them to the Newsweek retraction.

US officials want diplomats to try to convince Muslims the retraction is authentic and the original story was wrong. They acknowledged this would be an uphill battle.

Muslims in Afghanistan were skeptical about the turnaround on Monday.

- REUTERS