Holding firm in the face of international criticism of their treatment, US Defense Secretary Mr Donald Rumsfeld today visited the prison camp where al-Qaeda and Taliban captives are being held and said they would not be given the status of prisoners of war.
In Washington, President Bush prepared to receive interim Afghan leader Mr Hamid Karzai at their first meeting tomorrow, while some tribal leaders in Afghanistan questioned the make-up of a UN-appointed commission to summon a traditional grand assembly, or Loya Jirga.
As US troops conducted search operations for pockets of Taliban and al Qaeda fighters, the furor over 158 captives detained at an American naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, gained momentum with a report in the Washington Timesthat Secretary of State Mr Colin Powell asked Mr Bush to reconsider a decision not the classify the detainees as prisoners of war.
Mr Rumsfeld, who got a first-hand look at the conditions of the detainees on Sunday at Camp X-Ray, dismissed the suggestion.
"They are not POWs, they will not be determined to be POWs," he told journalists on the plane to Guantanamo Bay.
Human rights groups and some foreign politicians, including those from countries allied with Washington, have criticized the United States for classifying the detainees as "illegal combatants" and refusing to designate them as prisoners of war, which would give them certain rights under the Geneva Convention.
"I have absolutely full confidence in the way the detainees are being treated," said Mr Rumsfeld, who toured the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay along with four US senators. "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."
The camp is surrounded by razor wire and patrolled by unarmed military guards. Top US officials, including Mr Rumsfeld, have said repeatedly that the captives are being fed, sheltered and treated humanely, according to standards that comply with the Geneva Convention.
At their meeting at the White House tomorrow, Mr Karzai is expected to tell Mr Bush he does not want the US military campaign in Afghanistan to end until all members of Islamic militant Osama bin Laden's al Qaeda group are rooted out of his country, an aide said in Kabul.
"We want the operation to continue as long as needed and until the danger from them and their terrorist presence is no longer felt," his spokesman, Mr Yosuf Nooristani said.
Despite taking more than 450 al-Qaeda and Taliban captives, Washington still has no idea about the fate of bin Laden, believed to be the mastermind of the September 11th attacks on America that killed more than 3,000 people.
The Saudi exile has been variously reported as dead of kidney failure, safe in remote western Pakistan tribal areas, or still inside Afghanistan.