US Attacks UN Official On 'jails'

The issue is dogging a European tour by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice. "Lots of human rights... can be set aside temporarily... but not the right to life and not the protection against torture" Louise Arbour UN High Commissioner for Human Rights She will meet Nato foreign ministers on Thursday for formal talks but at a dinner on Wednesday the jails allegation reportedly already surfaced. "There were a number of frank interventions, always respectful of Condoleezza Rice as a person," a source briefed on the dinner was quoted by Reuters news agency as saying. On Wednesday, Ms Rice said American interrogators were bound by an international convention banning the use of torture, regardless of whether they were working in the US or abroad. 'Second-guessing' Ms Arbour, a former Canadian Supreme Court justice, told reporters in New York on Wednesday that the global ban on torture was becoming a casualty of the US-led "war on terror". She singled out the reported US policies of sending terror suspects to other countries and holding prisoners in secret detention. "Two phenomena today are having an acutely corrosive effect on the global ban on torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment," she said. Story from BBC NEWS: http://news.bbc.co.uk/go/pr/fr/-/1/hi/world/europe/4508892.

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