A critic of war on terror says US strategy includes abusing detainees

WASHINGTON -- The Bush administration has a strategy of abusing terror suspects during interrogations, Human Rights Watch said yesterday in its annual report on the treatment of people in more than 70 countries.

The human rights group based its conclusions mostly on statements by senior administration officials in the past year and said President Bush's reassurances that the United States does not torture suspects were deceptive.

''In 2005 it became disturbingly clear that the abuse of detainees had become a deliberate, central part of the Bush administration's strategy of interrogating terrorist suspects," the report said.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch, said yesterday that ''US disregard for human rights in the name of fighting terrorism" has hurt efforts to combat terror groups. He said it has robbed America of the moral high ground and bred resentment that ''has been a boon for terrorist recruiters."

On a trip to Europe last month, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told foreign leaders that cruel and degrading interrogation methods were forbidden for all US personnel at home and abroad.

Scott McClellan, White House spokesman, said yesterday that he had seen only news accounts of the report, but he rejected its conclusions.

''It appears to be based more on a political agenda than facts," he said. ''The United States does more than any country in the world to advance freedom and promote human rights. . . . The focus should be more on those who are violating human rights and denying people their human rights."

In a separate report, the organization strongly criticized three insurgent groups in Iraq -- Al Qaeda, Ansar al-Sunna, and the Islamic Army -- for targeting civilians.

The group, however, said the abuses ''took place in the context of the US-led invasion of Iraq and the ensuing military occupation that resulted in tens of thousands of civilian deaths and sparked the emergence of insurgent groups."

Human Rights Watch has criticized the Bush administration's war against terrorism before, registering concern that abuses in the name of fighting terror were unjustified and counterproductive. In other reports, the group has protested that the Bush administration's promotion of democracy was applied narrowly and missed allies, such as Saudi Arabia and Pakistan, that were due criticism.

The latest report taking aim at the Bush administration said the president's repeated assurances that US interrogators do not torture prisoners studiously avoid mentioning that international law prohibits cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment of prisoners.

The report said that Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales, while providing Senate testimony in January 2005 as a nominee for office, claimed the power to use cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment as long as the prisoner was a non-American held outside the United States.

''Other governments obviously subject detainees to such treatment or worse, but they do so clandestinely," the report said. ''The Bush administration is the only government in the world known to claim this power openly, as a matter of official policy, and to pretend that it is lawful."