Rice forced to defend prisoner renditions for the third time

EUROPE - In a new attempt to defuse the row over United States treatment of terrorist detainees, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice declared yesterday that the CIA and the US military are forbidden to use torture, not only in America but around the world.

But human rights groups say any "concession" is cosmetic, and her own aides say her remarks are a clarification, and not a shift in policy.

Some Nato foreign ministers may take up the issue when they meet Rice in Brussels overnight (NZ time).

Speaking in Kiev on the penultimate stop of a European trip, Rice said obligations under the existing international torture law "extend to US personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the US or outside the US".

Her remarks were her third attempt in as many days to fend off criticism in Europe and beyond of a host of alleged practices by the US, including the "rendition" of captured suspects to countries where they were likely to face torture, and the alleged use of secret CIA prisons abroad.

Signs are growing that the House of Representatives will join the Senate in demanding a specific legal ban on "cruel, inhuman and degrading" treatment, as stipulated in the Convention Against Torture signed by the US. In October, the Senate passed its amendment by 90 votes to 9.

All this week, Rice has been insisting that is already the case. But Congressional action was being resisted, with Vice-President Dick Cheney arguing the ban would tie the hands of the CIA in the "war on terror".

Not only has that stance drawn bitter criticism at home - casting doubt on Bush's claim that "the US does not torture" - it has undercut every effort by Rice to convince sceptics that the US respects international norms.

The rough ride of Rice this week is the latest instalment of an issue dating back to the September 11 attacks.

Arguing the need to prevent attacks, the White House effectively jettisoned The Geneva Conventions to gain free rein in interrogations.

After a notorious January 2002 memo in which then White House Counsel Alberto Gonzales described the conventions as "quaint," the Bush Administration steadily narrowed the definition of what constituted torture.

In June 2003, Bush reportedly authorised wide new CIA powers, including the right to run secret jails abroad.

Ultimately everything hinges on the precise definition of torture - whether this Administration believes that techniques used by the CIA, including simulated drowning, "cold rooms", sleep deprivation or systematic sexual humiliation, are torture.

"We need to know whether they are defining torture and cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment in the way that most people have defined it for many, many years," said Tom Malinowski, of Human Rights Watch.

"If so, that should rule out some of the techniques that were authorised for the CIA.

"My impression is that, for them, only something that leaves physical scars counts as torture."

- INDEPENDENT