US rejects plea on al Qaeda prisoner treatment

US Attorney General John Ashcroft, saying the war on terror was far from over, rejected a fresh plea yesterday to give prisoner of war status to alleged al Qaeda fighters held at a US naval base in Cuba.

Ashcroft, on a visit to Norway, said the 660 prisoners held in Guantanamo Bay after the US war to oust al Qaeda and the Taliban from Afghanistan in 2002 were treated with "respect for their humanity" but signalled they could be held indefinitely.

"When you detain unlawful combatants in time of war, generally throughout history there has been the capacity to maintain those individuals as detainees pending the outcome of the conflict," he told a news conference.

"I will concede this is a different and unique kind of conflict. But it's pretty clear that the war is very active," he said, noting bombs in India last week that killed 51 people and deaths of 22 in a bombing of a UN compound in Baghdad.

"Terrorism is rearing its ugly and vicious head around the world on a recurrent basis," he said. "We are going to continue to fight the war against terror effectively and aggressively."

Norwegian Justice Minister Odd Einar Doerum said he had urged Ashcroft to step up legal protection for the prisoners - called "detainees" by the Pentagon.

"They must be looked upon as prisoners of war until their status is decided upon by a tribunal which is accepted in accordance with the Third Geneva Convention," he said.

The convention lays out terms for humane treatment of prisoners, for instance, states that trials "shall take place as soon as possible" and that prisoners should get legal aid.

But Ashcroft branded the detainees were "unlawful combatants" who did not qualify as prisoners of war because they had "attacked innocent civilians without warning" and had, for instance, operated without uniforms.

He declined to give details of talks with Doerum about Mullah Krekar, a founder of radical Islamist group Ansar al-Islam based in northern Iraq and who has had refugee status in Norway with his family since 1991.

Diplomats say Washington has been aghast that Oslo has not permanently locked up Krekar, who says Ansar is not a threat. US Secretary of State Colin Powell has called his Norwegian counterpart at least twice to express concern.

"Ansar al-Islam is a group in which we have a great interest, to the extent to which we reject the idea of terror as a means of shaping public policy," Ashcroft said.

He also praised cooperation with Saudi Arabia in combating attacks. "I believe that progress is being made and I think not only that it (cooperation) is good but it continues to improve," he said.

And he rejected suggestions that Washington's reasons for the war to topple Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had been undermined because US-led forces had failed so far to find any weapons of mass destruction.

"I believe that we have already found a number of things that are very troublesome, things that relate to the evil chemistry and the evil biology that could be very dangerous to mankind," he said.