Powell in Rift Over Status of Detainees

Calling for a change in White House policy, Secretary of State Colin L. Powell has asked President Bush to ensure that international rules of war govern the treatment of 460 suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda fighters who have been captured in Afghanistan and are in U.S. custody, administration officials said Saturday.

The State Department urged the president to give the 158 detainees at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and 302 others under guard in Afghanistan the protections and treatment guaranteed under the Geneva Conventions, though not necessarily grant them the legal status of prisoners of war, officials said.

The administration has insisted that the men in custody are “unlawful combatants” who do not qualify for the legal rights and privileges required under the Geneva accords.

That determination has drawn criticism from several European allies, the International Committee of the Red Cross and human rights groups. The protests escalated sharply last week after the Pentagon released a photograph of bound and shackled prisoners at Guantanamo, their heads and eyes covered, kneeling before U.S. soldiers.

The Geneva Conventions, the critics argue, provide that military captives are presumed to be prisoners of war until a court determines otherwise.

The White House has opposed conferring such formal status on the prisoners, in part because of U.S. efforts to interrogate them about Osama bin Laden and his global Al Qaeda terrorist network could be severely curtailed. Under the Geneva Conventions, POWs are required to provide only name, rank and serial number.

Administration officials on Saturday strongly denied that Powell’s request to redefine the prisoners’ status was an open challenge to Bush. They instead portrayed it as a creative attempt to solve a contentious situation that has drawn what they consider undue attention.

The apparent rift was a rare departure for the Bush administration, which has been successful at keeping a united front, not just since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon unified the nation, but also since Bush took office a year ago. However, Powell reportedly has been at odds with the Pentagon on a range of policy decisions during that time.

The specifics of Powell’s request, and the White House response, were in some dispute Saturday.

White House Counsel Alberto R. Gonzales wrote a four-page memorandum Friday indicating that Powell wants the president to reverse course and declare the captives prisoners of war, several officials said.

The Washington Times, which first reported the memo Saturday, said a cover letter written by National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice asked members of the president’s war cabinet to submit their views so a memorandum could be presented to Bush on Saturday afternoon.

But Sean McCormack, a National Security Council spokesman, said the Gonzales memo was a draft and that it misstated Powell’s position. He said Powell was not arguing that the detainees be declared prisoners of war, granting them protected legal status, but that they receive treatment consistent with the Geneva Conventions.

McCormack said he could not confirm that the National Security Council had met or made any new recommendations to Bush concerning the issue, but he acknowledged that there was a lively legal debate about the status of the detainees. “Terrorism is difficult,” he said. “It is hard to know how to apply existing international norms to this new kind of conflict.”

He took pains to argue that the debate would not materially affect the treatment of the detainees. “The real-world point here is that the detainees have been and will be treated humanely and consistent with the principles of the Geneva Convention.”

A senior State Department official also described the Gonzales memo as inaccurate. He said Powell, a former chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had not proposed giving the captives legal status as POWs.

“The issue is not whether these people are prisoners of war,” the official said. “They are not. They’re not going to get musical instruments or monthly paychecks or any of that. Nothing will change in their treatment.”

The official said Powell is concerned that the administration not give the appearance of abandoning or ignoring the Geneva Conventions. “We’re concerned about Americans operating in other circumstances. You don’t want to set a precedent that the convention doesn’t apply.”

Vice President Dick Cheney, speaking to a Cincinnati audience of GOP supporters, called the detainees “really bad people” who do not qualify as prisoners of war. But he said they are being treated well. “Nobody should feel defensive or unhappy about the quality of treatment they’ve received. It’s probably better than they deserve.”

But officials from several human rights groups argued that Powell’s proposed solution was no solution.

“For the White House or the Defense Department to take it on themselves to make this determination as to who is a prisoner of war and who is not, without taking it to a court, is simply not adhering to the Geneva Convention,” said Vienna Colucci, a spokeswoman for Amnesty International USA.

The Pentagon last week temporarily suspended transfers of prisoners from Afghanistan to Guantanamo Bay, saying it had run out of space. The prisoners there are kept in 8-by-8-foot outdoor cages with metal roofs.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, who has fiercely defended the administration’s handling of the prisoners, is scheduled to lead a group of reporters, including several from overseas news organizations, on a tour of the Guantanamo camp today.

Sen. James M. Inhofe (R-Okla.), who visited the facility Friday with a congressional delegation, told CNN the detainees were “not prisoners of war.”

“[They] should not be afforded the comforts or the protections of the Geneva Convention,” he said. “They don’t represent a country. They don’t represent a military unit.

“We’re not dealing with the homeless here; we’re dealing with terrorists,” Inhofe added. “Now we’ve got to start treating it that way and recognizing that we are dealing with illegal combatants. And we need to get this behind us and get the American people to realize that we’re in a war with a bunch of terrorists.”

Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.), who also visited the camp, said he also opposes giving Al Qaeda detainees the full privileges of the Geneva Conventions.

“A soldier is entitled to be released when the war is over,” he said. “But if these people are committed terrorists who are just going to take release as an opportunity to attack again, then it would be insane to release them, especially if they don’t qualify as prisoners of war.

“I think the better position,” Sessions added, “is that they are not prisoners of war and we’re not bound to do everything the rules of war call for, but that we’re going to follow the spirit of it, which is what we’re doing.”