Jim Mannion, Agence France Presse  --  Arab News

BAGHDAD, 14 May 2004 — The International Committee of the Red Cross has presented the US government with a new report that is critical of the treatment of detainees in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, a senior defense official said yesterday.

The report was turned over to Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz by the State Department on Tuesday, said the official, who was traveling with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.

The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the report had not yet been analyzed in detail but was critical.

Rumsfeld noted the report in an interview with reporters traveling with him on an unannounced trip to Iraq to meet with US troops and their commanders.

Rumsfeld said there would always be differences of opinions over whether the treatment of detainees at Guantanamo met the standards of the Geneva Conventions. “There is a constant review of that, and people will say different things,” he said.

Traveling with Rumsfeld was the defense department’s general counsel, James Haynes, and Vice Admiral Albert Church, the US navy’s inspector general, who just concluded a two-day review of conditions at Guantanamo. Church said his investigation was focused on whether the secretary’s orders and directions regarding the detainees at Guantanamo were being carried out.

But he recommended to Rumsfeld that a closer look be taken at issues raised by the ICRC, as well as at earlier actions at the detention center that he was unable to examine. He said he reviewed transcripts of past ICRC meetings with Lt. Gen. Geoffrey Miller, who is now running detainee operations in Iraq.