US says it shifts on prisoner mistreatment = 12-07-05

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=578&u=/nm/20051207/ts_nm/security_usa_torture_dc_5
 
US says it shifts on prisoner mistreatment = 12-07-05By Saul Hudson
 
KIEV (Reuters) - The United States, seeking to defuse criticism of reports of abuse of prisoners, has changed its policy on interrogating detainees, officials said on Wednesday, but human rights groups were skeptical there was a real shift.
 
U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, on a trip to Ukraine, said U.S. personnel would be banned worldwide from subjecting prisoners to cruelty.
 
But London-based Amnesty International said Rice's remarks were "not a major concession." It still wanted serious action by Washington over what it called cases of torture in U.S. bases.
 
"As a matter of U.S. policy, the United States' obligations under the CAT (Convention against Torture), which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment -- those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States," Rice said.
 
U.S. officials said her comments marked a policy shift toward the convention. Previously, the U.S. administration had interpreted the convention as applying only to U.S. territory.
 
Rice is on a tour of Europe to try to defuse criticism by rights bodies over treatment of prisoners at U.S. bases.
 
These critics suspect the Central Intelligence Agency of running secret prisons in eastern Europe and covertly transporting suspects around the continent. That has led to accusations that the U.S. tactics could lead to torture.
 
LOOPHOLE
 
Rights groups have said the United States has exploited a loophole in interpreting international law to mistreat prisoners in places such as Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay in Cuba.
 
Rice was heading on Wednesday to Brussels where she was likely to face sharp criticism despite the defense of U.S. policy she has outlined in Washington, Berlin and Bucharest.
 
Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot said this week that Rice's answers to the allegations had so far been unsatisfactory and he predicted a "lively discussion" when she met NATO foreign ministers on Thursday.
 
New York-based Human Rights Watch said it was important to know how Rice's move "is translated operationally."
 
"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. If so, that should rule out some of the techniques that were authorized for the CIA," said Tom Malinowski, HRW's Washington advocacy director.
 
He singled out the interrogation technique called "waterboarding," in which the victim is made to feel he is drowning, which Malinowski said was even recognized as torture during the Spanish Inquisition.
 
The move announced by Rice may also be an important concession in U.S. domestic politics where Senator John McCain, a Republican from Arizona and a former prisoner of war who was mistreated in Vietnam, has pressed the administration to close the loophole.
Until Wednesday, the administration, led by Vice President Dick Cheney, had resisted legislation proposed by McCain that was widely backed in Congress.
 
(Additional reporting by Jeremy Lovell in London, and New York newsroom)