US: The Pentagon has decided to omit from new detainee policies a key tenet of the Geneva Convention that bans "humiliating and degrading treatment", according to military officials, a step that would mark a potentially permanent shift away from strict adherence to international human rights standards.
The decision follows a lengthy debate within the department of defence, but will not become final until the Pentagon makes new guidelines public, a step that has been delayed.
However, the state department fiercely opposes the military's decision to exclude Geneva Convention protections and has been pushing for the Pentagon and White House to reconsider, defence officials acknowledged.
For more than a year, the Pentagon has been redrawing policies on detainees and interrogation, and intends to issue a new Army Field Manual, which, along with accompanying directives, represents core instructions to US soldiers worldwide.
The process has been beset by debate and controversy, but the decision to omit Geneva Convention protections from a principal directive comes at a time of growing worldwide criticism of US detention practices and the conduct of US forces in Iraq.
The directive on interrogations, a senior defence official said, is being rewritten to create safeguards so that detainees are treated humanely but can still be questioned effectively.
President George Bush's critics and supporters have debated whether it is possible to prove a direct link between administration declarations that it will not be bound by the Geneva Convention and events such as the abuses at Abu Ghraib or the killings of civilians last year at Haditha, Iraq, allegedly by US marines.
But the exclusion of the Geneva provisions may make it more difficult for the administration to portray such incidents as aberrations. And it undercuts arguments that US forces follow the toughest, most broadly accepted standards when fighting wars. The detainee directive was due to be released in April along with the Army Field Manual on interrogations. But objections from several senators on other field manual issues forced a delay. Senators objected to provisions allowing harsher interrogation techniques for unlawful combatants, such as suspected terrorists, as opposed to traditional prisoners of war.
The lawmakers argue that differing standards of treatment allowed by the field manual would violate a broadly supported anti-torture measure advanced by Senator John McCain. Last year the senator pushed Congress to ban torture and cruel treatment and to establish the Army Field Manual as the uniform standard for treatment of all detainees. Despite administration opposition, the measure passed and became law.
For decades, it was the official policy of the US military to follow minimum standards for treating detainees as laid out in the Geneva Convention. But, in 2002, Mr Bush suspended portions of the Geneva Convention for captured al-Qaeda and Taliban fighters. Mr Bush's order superseded military policy in effect at the time, touching off debate over US obligations under the Geneva accord, a debate that intensified after reports of abuses at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and at Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison.
Among the directives being rewritten following Mr Bush's 2002 order is one governing US detention operations. Military lawyers and other defence officials wanted the redrawn version of the document, known as DoD Directive 2310, to again embrace Common Article 3 of the Geneva Convention.
That provision - known as a "common" article because it is part of each of the four Geneva pacts approved in 1949 - bans torture and cruel treatment. Unlike other Geneva provisions, Article 3 covers all detainees - whether unlawful combatants or traditional prisoners of war. The protections for detainees in Article 3 go beyond the McCain amendment by prohibiting humiliation, treatment that falls short of cruelty or torture.