The United States comfortably defeated a call to the UN's top human rights body to open an inquiry into alleged violations at Guantanamo Bay.
The United Nations Commission on Human Rights rejected by 22 votes to 8, with 23 abstentions, a resolution brought by Cuba calling for the setting up of a special UN investigator for the detention centre at a US naval base on its territory.
European Union states on the 53-state commission in Geneva sided with the United States in rejecting the resolution, saying Washington was already in talks with existing UN investigators about possible visits to the prison.
The United States holds over 500 alleged suspects in its declared war on terrorism at Guantanamo with many detainees having been there for more than three years.
Washington calls prisoners sent to Guantanamo enemy combatants and says they are not entitled to the rights accorded to prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
Human rights activists have accused the United States of condemning Guantanamo prisoners to indefinite detention in a "legal black hole", and note that some former detainees have said they were tortured by US personnel at the base.
Cuban ambassador Jorge Ivan Mora Godoy - whose resolution was seconded by Syria, North Korea, Libya and Belarus - said the move aimed to "put an end to the impunity and conspiratorial silence" over one of the "gravest chapters of massive and flagrant violations of human rights in recent history".
The United States called the move by Cuba "ironic," because Havana has itself consistently refused to allow visits by special UN rights investigators.