WASHINGTON - United States Secretary of State Colin Powell has urged President George W. Bush to declare al Qaeda and Taleban prisoners held at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and elsewhere prisoners of war, with protection under the Geneva Conventions.
Powell's defiant challenge - his boldest during a year of reported rifts within the Administration - is revealed in a four-page White House memo obtained by the Washington Times and published in advance of a National Security Council summit to discuss the prisoners.
The proposal would radically transform conditions under which the prisoners are being kept and clarify their legal status.
Rumours of a deep rift between Powell and the White House - specifically Vice-President Dick Cheney, his old nemesis - have dogged the Bush Administration. The stark split of opinion on such an internationally sensitive issue cuts to the core of that division, and means it cannot stay hidden for much longer.
The State Department had no comment, but a source told the Observer: "The Secretary of State has for a while been monitoring with some concern international concerns over the treatment and status of prisoners."
The note says that Powell "would agree that al Qaeda and Taleban fighters could be determined not to be prisoners of war, but only on a case-by-case basis following individual hearings before a military board".
While the White House refused to comment on the memo, sources indicate that most of the President's security team would oppose the suggestion.
Powell's views will give fresh energy to international pressures on Bush over his decision that hundreds of Taleban and al Qaeda fighters are "battlefield detainees", not prisoners of war - a ruling which put them in a legal limbo and deprived them of treatment under the Geneva Convention.
If Powell wins his argument, the US would have to provide clothing, exercise rooms and canteens. Prisoners of war cannot be hooded or shackled and would be allowed contact with the outside world, including letters to families.
There would also be restrictions on the open-ended interrogations used at present. The Americans say these have given the FBI new insights into how the al Qaeda network operates.
In other developments:
* The top commander of the war, General Tommy Franks, defended US tactics, saying that deploying large numbers of American ground forces would not have increased chances of capturing Osama bin Laden or Taleban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar.
* Afghanistan's former King, Zahir Shah, will end 28 years of exile and return home in mid-March.
Afghanistan's interim leader, Hamid Karzai, will fly to Rome to accompany the King back home.
The ailing 87-year-old king has been exiled in Italy since he was ousted in a bloodless palace coup in 1973.
- REUTERS
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Powell joins fray over Guantanamo POW status
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