Despite self-serving criticisms by Washington’s imperialist rivals, especially in Germany, France, and the Netherlands, about reports in the media that CIA secret prisons have been operating in some eastern European countries, NATO secretary-general Jaap de Hoop Scheffer said Rice’s visit “cleared the air” over treatment of detainees. Washington promised that those detained in southern Afghanistan would be treated under rules of the Geneva Convention.

The 32 foreign ministers from NATO countries then swiftly fell into line with an endorsement on December 8 of the U.S. move to expand NATO military operations into southern Afghanistan, where stiffer fighting is expected than in the northern and western parts of the country, where they are currently based.

Rice refused to comment—on “national security” grounds—about the existence of the CIA prisons. She stated, however, that “as a matter of U.S. policy, the United States’ obligations under the CAT [UN Convention Against Torture], which prohibits cruel, inhumane, and degrading treatment—those obligations extend to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States.”

Previous statements by some U.S. government officials, including Attorney General Alberto Gonzales, indicated that such official restrictions only applied inside the United States. White House spokesman Scott McClellan, on the other hand, insisted Rice’s comments were “existing policy.”

However, the various “interrogation” techniques that would be covered by a formal ban on torture, such as sleep deprivation and threats to drown an individual strapped to a plank, are not spelled out. According to human rights groups and press accounts, the U.S. government has used such methods.

“I think we have gotten guarantees and all the satisfactory answers we can hope for,” said Netherlands foreign minister Ben Bot. The Dutch government had been among those most critical of the U.S. treatment of such detainees. The Dutch cabinet is now expected to vote December 19 on deploying 1,200 additional troops to the expanded NATO force in Afghanistan. In that Central Asian country there are currently 12,000 U.S. soldiers and 9,200 NATO troops, with an additional 6,000 of the latter to be added next year.

The agreement Rice signed with the Romanian government December 6 allows up to 1,500 U.S. troops to use a main base and airfield near the Black Sea port city of Constanta, plus three other facilities in the area, Bloomberg News reported. Troops will be rotated into these “forward operating sites” as needed for conducting operations and training in the area.

At a meeting of the Southeastern Europe Defense Ministerial, held for the first time in the United States December 5-6, U.S. defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld hailed the group’s decision to undertake its first deployment of the Southeastern Europe Brigade. It’s going to Afghanistan in February 2006 to operate as part of the NATO mission. The Ministerial, formed in 1996, includes the governments of Italy, Greece, Turkey, Albania, Bulgaria, Romania, Macedonia, Slovenia, Croatia, and Ukraine.

In a major speech in defense of U.S. troop operations in Iraq, presented December 7 before the Council on Foreign Relations, President George Bush emphasized their role in carrying out some small-scale localized reconstruction efforts. “We must recognize Iraq as the central front in the war on terror,” Bush said, and “we also have to win the battle after the battle.”

Bush hailed the support given by Democratic senator Joseph Lieberman to the administration’s strategy in Iraq. He quoted from a recent letter by Lieberman that said, “What a colossal mistake it would be for America’s bipartisan political leadership to choose this moment in history to lose its will, and in a famous phrase, to seize defeat from the jaws of the coming victory.”  
 
 
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