EU condemns secret CIA prisons

BRUSSELS, Sep 15 (Reuters) The European Union condemned today the detention of terrorism suspects by the United States in secret overseas prisons, whose existence U.S. President George Bush first acknowledged last week.

European nations had held back from criticising Washington over the matter after it first emerged in media reports last year, and said last December they were satisfied with U.S. statements denying any wrongdoing.

''The existence of secret detention facilities where detained persons are kept in a legal vacuum is not in conformity with international humanitarian law and international criminal law,'' Finnish Foreign minister Erkki Tuomioja told a news conference after the bloc's 25 ministers discussed Bush's comments.

''We reiterate that in combating terrorism, human rights and humanitarian standards have to be maintained,'' said Tuomioja, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency.

Bush publicly acknowledged the CIA held high-level terrorism suspects, including alleged Sept. 11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, in secret overseas locations.

He strongly defended the secret detention and questioning of terrorism suspects and said the CIA treated them humanely and did not torture. The detention program, disclosed last year by The Washington Post, provoked an international outcry.

''Secret prisons are illegal, immoral, and counter-productive in any strategy to win hearts and minds,'' EU counter-terrorism coordinator Gijs de Vries said in a statement today.

Bush announced last week Mohammed and 13 others were transferred recently to the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, detention center run by the Pentagon to be prosecuted in the future.

''We acknowledge the intention of the U.S. administration to treat all detainees in accordance with the provisions of the Geneva convention,'' Tuomioja said.

Yesterday a Senate panel rejected Bush's pleas that new legislation on foreign terrorists allow CIA interrogators to use tough interrogation methods.

Instead, the Senate Armed Services Committee endorsed an alternative bill by Arizona Republican Sen. John McCain that would better protect the rights of foreign terrorism suspects.

Bush has not revealed the location of secret overseas jails, but EU member Poland and candidate country Romania have been accused of hosting such jails by an investigator for Europe's human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe.

Poland's deputy foreign minister, Stanislaw Komorowski, issued a fresh denial on Friday. ''The prisons did not exist in Poland and there is no need to return to the issue,'' he told reporters in Brussels.

Spanish Foreign minister Miguel Angel Moratinos told EU lawmakers investigating the CIA abuses yesterday that Spain may have been a stopover for secret CIA flights but that there is no evidence that violations of international law were committed on its soil.

Reuters SAM DB2338