CIA detainee move ends White House debate -report

WASHINGTON, Sep 8 (Reuters) The transfer of 14 foreign terrorism suspects from CIA prisons abroad to the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, resolved a two-year debate in the Bush administration over its detention policy, The Washington Post reported.

The debate was touched off by a personal plea from British Prime Minister Tony Blair for the release of British citizens in US custody, the newspaper said yesterday.

According to the report, the issue divided President George W Bush's key advisers and kept open the CIA's ''black sites''prisons until Bush ordered the facilities emptied.

Bush acknowledged the secret CIA prison program for the first time on Wednesday, announcing the transfer of 14 detainees. In all about 100 detainees had been held in the program, which provoked outrage in Europe.

Major factors that pushed the president toward the announcement were demands from US allies to close sites down and an appeal from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Bush to consider the administration's legacy, the Post said citing unnamed officials.

In 2004, the newspaper said, senior lawyers in Vice President Dick Cheney's office, the State Department, the Justice Department, the CIA and the Pentagon argued over the request from Britain for release of the men. Cheney and Rice grew increasingly at odds over the detainee policies with Cheney arguing to preserve the program, the Post said.

Senior policymakers held nearly two dozen meetings on the detainee issue and Bush met with his top advisers at the end of August to make a final decision, the report said.

In a final pitch for a change in policy, Rice said that it was important for the United States to bring the issue to closure, both on foreign policy grounds and moral grounds, the according to several colleagues who attended the meeting.

Reuters PB GC1128