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US rejects torture charges, Afghan government faces factional strife
( 2002-01-23 11:38 ) (7 )

The United States on Tuesday rejected charges it was torturing Taliban and al-Qaeda prisoners as Afghanistan's interim government faced the challenge of disarming a war-weary country and ending factional fighting.

US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld angrily denied that prisoners transported from Afghanistan to a US naval base in Guantanamo, Cuba, were being ill-treated or subjected to torture.

"The treatment of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay is proper, it's humane, it's appropriate, and it is fully consistent with international conventions," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference.

He defended the classification of the detainees as "unlawful combatants," rather than as prisoners of war with certain rights under the Geneva Convention.

EU foreign policy chief Javier Solana said the fact that Washington has linked the prisoners to the September 11 terror attacks that killed more than 3,000 people should make no difference.

But Rumsfeld acknowledged Tuesday intelligence gathering has been given precedence over the swift administration of justice and he gave no indication how long the detainees would be held without charges.

High-profile detainee John Walker Lindh, the so-called American Taliban, was on his way back to the United States Tuesday aboard a US military aircraft to face terrorism charges, US defense officials said.

Held since December aboard the US amphibious warship USS Bataan, the 20-year-old Muslim convert was being flown back to the United States to face charges of conspiring to kill US nationals overseas and supporting al-Qaeda.

Walker had been held and interrogated about his involvement with al-Qaeda since appearing among al-Qaeda fighters after a bloody prison uprising at Mazar-i-Sharif.

Rumsfeld denied Walker was receiving different treatment from other prisoners.

A federal judge in Los Angeles said he had serious doubts he would be able to hear the first challenge to the legality of the US military's detention in Cuba of prisoners from the Afghan conflict.

Federal Judge Howard Matz had been asked by a group of human rights advocates to order more than 100 suspects being held at the base to appear in a US civil court to hear the charges against them.

The advocates asked the Los Angeles judge to consider their claim that Washington's incarceration of the suspects at the US military outpost in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, violates the US Constitution and the Geneva Convention.

At Tuesday's hearing, Matz declined to rule on the petition and instead heard arguments over whether he had jurisdiction in the case brought by a group of clergymen, journalists and lawyers on behalf of 110 detainees.

In Afghanistan, officials played down reported clashes that threaten to jeopardize the nation's return to stability after international donor countries pledged four billion dollars in aid.

The urgency of the reconstruction effort was underlined Monday by reports of weekend skirmishing between factions that were once allies against the Taliban in northern Afghanistan.

An official from the Afghan defense ministry's foreign liaison department said fighting Sunday in Sar-e-Pul province lasted only 20 minutes.

Zabit Salih Mohammad Registani insisted there had been a local dispute between commanders that had been quickly resolved by a more senior officer in Mazar-i-Sharif, but said "some people" had died.

Amid the reports of looting and faction fighting, Afghan interim leader Hamid Karzai warned at the donors conference in Tokyo that the cash promised by some 60 nations and 20 international organizations would have to arrive quickly.

"I also hope the pledges are made true in the coming days so we can take on the process of reconstruction," Karzai told the Japan National Press Club.

More pressure will be heaped on the shaky post-war settlement by the return of thousands, perhaps millions, of refugees who fled Afghanistan over 22 years of warfare.

The UN refugee agency estimates that already this month 35,000 Afghans have returned from camps in Iran and Pakistan to a country where around 700,000 people are already reliant on food aid.

Some four million Afghans are living in the foreign camps, and many others are displaced inside the country.

Karzai's interim government took power last month after US-led forces routed the Taliban militia and Afghan opposition factions struck a power-sharing deal brokered by the United Nations.

Hundreds of US troops are still inside Afghanistan, searching for remnants of the Taliban and the al-Qaeda network of Islamic radicals that Washington blames for the September 11 terror attacks on the United States.

On Tuesday, Russia, a backer of the US war on terrorism, warned Washington against widening the war to Iraq, ahead of a visit to Moscow by Iraqi Deputy Prime Minister Tariq Aziz.

"It will be the worst-case scenario that would lead to catastrophic consequences for the region," senior Russian foreign ministry official Nikolai Kartuzov told the ITAR-TASS news agency.

Washington came under attack on another legal front as a senior UN official accused the Bosnian and US governments of acting illegally when Sarajevo handed over six Arab terror suspects to US authorities last week.

Also, tensions in south Asia were further heightened Tuesday when four unidentified gunmen attacked an American Centre in Calcutta, India, killing four policemen and injuring 20 other people -- none of them Americans.

Indian Home Minister L.K. Advani blamed "armed terrorists" and said the attack had been claimed by a group with alleged links to Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence agency.

But the United States said it was unsure if the attack was a new terror assault targeted at its interests or the result of a grievance against local police.

"As far as who exactly was responsible for this we don't know at this point," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said.

Secretary of State Colin Powell spoke to Indian Foreign Minister Jaswant Singh and Pakistan's President Musharraf hours after the attack, officials said, amid fears South Asian tensions could again reach boiling point.