Rice tries to allay fears over CIA torture

SOME NATO members shifted away from a confrontation with the US yesterday, welcoming Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice’s explanation of Washington’s views on secret prisons and the treatment of terrorist suspects.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said Ms Rice assured the allies the US administration did not interpret international humanitarian law differently from allied governments.

On arrival at a NATO foreign ministers meeting he said that was important “because we must not be torn apart over the interpretation of international law”.

The Dutch and Belgian foreign ministers both said Ms Rice spoke convincingly about the US commitment to human rights at a private dinner with her NATO and European Union counterparts.

NATO spokesman James Appathurai said the expressions of support “seems to have been the flavour of the meeting” at which Ms Rice “led off a long discussion” on the issue of CIA-run prisons and treatment of prisoners.

Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and other countries have been critical of Washington after claims that the CIA has been transferring terrorist suspects to and from Europe using secret prisons and may have been torturing those suspects. The US has been taken to task over such techniques as “waterboarding”, in which prisoners are strapped to a plank and dunked in water, made to fear they may be drowned.

“Ms Rice has reiterated that in the US international obligations are not interpreted differently than in Europe,” Mr Steinmeier said.

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot - whose government faces public opposition to expanding the Netherlands’ military presence in Afghanistan as part of NATO operations - said he left the dinner “very satisfied” by Ms Rice’s comments.

In Ukraine on Wednesday ahead of the dinner in Brussels, Ms Rice gave the Bush administration’s most comprehensive account yet of US rules on treatment of prisoners in the war on terrorism, but her assurances left loopholes for practices that could be akin to torture.

Ms Rice said cruel and degrading interrogation methods were off limits for all US personnel at home and abroad. But she gave no examples of banned practises, did not define the meaning of cruelty or degradation and did not say if the rules would apply to private contractors or foreign interrogators.

At every stop on her European tour this week, Ms Rice has faced questions about US practices in the pursuit of terrorists.