WASHINGTON - In a blow to United States Secretary of State Colin Powell, Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said al Qaeda and Taleban captives will not be given the status of prisoners of war.
Rumsfeld spoke on a visit to the prison camp in Cuba where the detainees are being held.
The furore over the 158 captives at Guantanamo Bay gained momentum with newspaper reports that Powell had asked President George W. Bush to reconsider a decision not to classify them as prisoners of war.
Rumsfeld, who got a first-hand look at the conditions of the detainees' confinement at Camp X-Ray, dismissed the suggestion.
"They are not POWs; they will not be determined to be POWs."
Human rights groups and foreign politicians, including some of Washington's allies, have criticised the US for refusing to designate the detainees as prisoners of war, which gives them certain rights under the Geneva Convention.
"I have absolutely full confidence in the way the detainees are being treated," said Rumsfeld.
"I am not down there for that purpose. I am down there to talk to the troops, to thank them for what they are doing."
Rumsfeld spent three hours touring the prison complex, including the detention area and an interrogation centre, before flying back to Washington.
US newspapers reported that there was a debate within the Bush Administration over just how the Geneva Convention should be applied to the detainees.
But Vice-President Dick Cheney told ABC television that all members of the Administration agreed the captured fighters could not be classified as prisoners of war since they targeted civilians and did not represent the army of a state.
The debate focused on whether another category in the Geneva Convention - that of unlawful combatants - should apply.
"The ultimate result is they will be treated humanely, but they are not going to be accorded the treatment we would accord, for example, the Iraqis we captured in the 1991 Gulf War," Cheney said.
In other developments yesterday:
* US special forces launched a raid on a hospital in Afghanistan where six fighters loyal to al Qaeda have been holed up for weeks.
The men, who have threatened to blow themselves up if anyone but a doctor enters their ward, are among a 19-strong group brought to Kandahar's Chinese Hospital just before the city fell to opposition forces on December 7.
US snipers took up position behind the hospital walls and small arms fire and muffled explosions were heard.
* A group calling itself The National Movement for the Restoration of Pakistani Sovereignty said it had seized Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, who has been missing in Pakistan.
The group sent an e-mail message to various news organisations with pictures of Pearl in captivity, including one with a gun pointed at his head, and claimed he was a "CIA officer" who was "posing as a journalist".
Pearl, aged 38, disappeared in Karachi last week while seeking to interview leaders of radical Islamic groups.
- REUTERS
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