US: US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice said yesterday she could give no guarantee that terrorism detainees would not be abused again despite what she called clear US rules against torture.
"Will there be abuses of policy? That's entirely possible," Dr Rice said at a press conference on the fringes of a Nato foreign ministers meeting in Brussels. "Just because you're a democracy it doesn't mean you're perfect."
However she offered assurances that any abuses would be investigated and violators punished.
She spoke a day after trying to clarify to European foreign ministers the US policy on secret prisons and treatment of terrorism suspects. The Nato foreign ministers approved plans to send up to 6,000 troops into southern Afghanistan, a major expansion of the alliance's peacekeeping mission.
Nato secretary general Jaap De Hoop Scheffer said Dr Rice had "cleared the air". Dr Rice told Nato and EU foreign ministers over dinner last night that the US did not violate the rights of terrorist suspects, said Mr De Hoop Scheffer. "You will not see this discussion continuing" at the Nato headquarters, he told a news conference yesterday.
His comments echoed those of several foreign ministers who sought to shift away from a confrontation with Washington.
Dr Rice repeated that no US personnel were allowed to commit abuses, whether on US soil or overseas. "The US doesn't engage in torture, doesn't condone it, doesn't expect its employees to engage in it," she said.
German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said yesterday that Dr Rice "has reiterated that in the US international obligations are not interpreted differently than in Europe".
In Washington, Mr Bush also worked to calm the uproar over allegations of secret CIA prisons, reassuring the chancellor of Austria that the US was abiding by laws forbidding torture.
The deployment next year of mostly European and Canadian troops to Afghanistan will free US forces to focus on counter-insurgency operations against Taliban and al-Qaeda fighters in Afghanistan's volatile south and east.
Nato's expansion should allow the US to reduce its 18,000-strong military presence almost five years after it invaded the country following the September 11th attacks. The plans give the Nato peacekeepers a stronger self-defence mandate, guarantee support from US combat troops if they face a serious attack, and set out rules for handling detainees - all issues which have concerned some European allies mulling participation in the expanded force.
Colum Lynch adds from the UN: The US-led fight against terrorism is eroding the time-honoured international prohibition of torture and other forms of cruel or degrading treatment of prisoners, the top UN human rights official said on Wednesday in a statement commemorating Human Rights Day.
Louise Arbour, the high commissioner for human rights, presented the most forceful criticism to date of US detention policies by a senior UN official, asserting that holding suspects incommunicado in itself amounts to torture.
John Bolton, US ambassador to the UN, criticised Ms Arbour, calling it "inappropriate" for her to choose a Human Rights Day celebration to criticise the US instead of such rights abusers as Burma, Cuba and Zimbabwe.