Louise Arbour, UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, on Wednesday implicitly criticized the United States for violating the global ban on torture.

Arbour told reporters at UN headquarters in New York that the absolute ban on torture is becoming a casualty of the so-called "war on terror" through loosened legal definition, secret detention, hand-over of prisoners without adequate safeguards and other practices.

"Pursuing security objectives at all costs may create a world in which we are neither safe nor free," she said with aim at the United States.

Briefing reporters in the run-up to Saturday's Human Rights Day, which this year is highlighting the theme of torture, Arbour singled out two practices as having a particularly corrosive effect, including the recourse to so-called "diplomatic assurances" and the holding of prisoners in secret detention.

"The former may make countries complicit with torture carried out by others, while the latter creates the conditions for torture by one's own," she noted, obviously referring to the United States.

Holding people in secret detention amounts to disappearance which itself amounts to torture or ill-treatment, she said, adding that prolonged incommunicado detention or detention in secret places facilitates the perpetration of torture.

Arbour stressed that the international ban on torture prohibits transferring persons, no matter what their crime or suspected activity, to a place where they might face torture or other ill-treatment.

Her comments drew an immediate rebuke from US ambassador John Bolton, who said it was "disappointing that she has chosen to talk about press commentaries about alleged American conduct."

"I think it is inappropriate and illegimate for an international civil servant to second guess the conduct of what wear e engaged in the war on terror with nothing more as evidence than what she reads in the newspapers," Bolton told reporters.

The United States has denied practicing torture but it has avoided denying or confirming a Washington Post report that the CIA runs secret centers in Eastern Europe to interrogate terrorism suspects.

Meanwhile, US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, under pressure from European leaders during her ongoing visit to the continent, has defended the US treatment of detainees as lawful operations that prevent attacks.

(Xinhua News Agency December 8, 2005)