The US Senate has given final approval to a bill for tough interrogation and prosecution of terrorism suspects in a move that sees President Bush prevail after a series of setbacks on his detainee policies.
The Senate passed the bill 65-34, hours after Mr Bush was on Capitol Hill urging Republicans to stay behind the high-profile measure ahead of November 7th elections that will determine control of Congress.
The House of Representatives passed the same measure on Wednesday and must make a technical change to reconcile it with the Senate's. Mr Bush was expected to sign it soon afterward.
President Bush
Although the bill cleared the Senate by a comfortable margin, it barely survived an earlier challenge that would have delayed and possibly killed it.
"The Senate sent a strong signal to the terrorists that we will continue using every element of national power to pursue our enemies and to prevent attacks on America," Mr Bush said in a statement after the Senate vote.
"The Military Commissions Act of 2006 will allow the continuation of a CIA program that has been one of America's most potent tools in fighting the war on terror," Mr Bush said.
The UN torture investigator said later that the law would deprive people of the right to a fair trial before independent courts and could lead to mistreatment.
Manfred Nowak, United Nations special rapporteur on torture, regretted that the bill ignored UN rights bodies which have said US interrogation methods and prolonged detentions violate international law.
The bill sets standards for interrogating suspects - but through a complex set of rules that human rights groups said could allow harsh techniques that bordered on torture such as sleep deprivation and induced hypothermia.
It establishes military tribunals that would allow some use of evidence obtained by coercion, but would give defendants access to classified evidence being used to convict them.
The bill also expands the definition of "enemy combatants" mostly held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to include those who provide weapons, money and other support to terrorist groups.
The Supreme Court struck down Mr Bush's first system of military commissions to try suspects, leaving the process in limbo with no successful prosecutions since the September 11th attacks. Mr Bush then faced a rebellion over his revised plan that three leading Republican senators said would allow abusive interrogations and unfair trials.
After talks, Mr Bush got much of what he wanted in the bill to continue the once-secret CIA programme of detention and aggressive interrogations of suspects that critics said amounted to torture.