LONDON: The pictures of prisoners at the US military base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba, facetiously called Camp X-Ray by their guards, and dismissive remarks about their status and their rights uttered by Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, show the complete disregard, not to say contempt, the Bush administration has for international opinion.

Rumsfeld has come up with a new definition - “unlawful combatants” - which he has made clear in his view are not covered by the protection of the Geneva conventions. Along with anyone anywhere else accused of involvement in “international terrorism” - including those held at America’s behest in British jails - they face the prospect of being tried behind closed doors in “military commissions” from which the only right of appeal would be to the commander-in-chief, George Bush himself.

Rumsfeld’s approach reflects the now apparently dominant view within the Bush administration that the US does not need to be bound by international law, any more than it does by international arms control treaties, and that military might is enough. It was described on Monday by Kenneth Rose, executive director of the New York-based Human Rights Watch, as a “highly cynical Hobbesian view of the world”.

It is also potentially extremely dangerous, not least for British and other international peacekeepers, sent in to do what the US military does not care or dare to. The risk is that if hostile forces capture them, the US regime at Camp X-Ray might well be cited as a precedent.

The Rumsfeld position is also short-sighted. The US needs the cooperation of its allies, not least Britain, to fight its “war” against international terrorism. The way it is going about it is not endearing itself to Britain’s security and intelligence agencies, Blair should take note, if only because it threatens to undermine their work, including the help they seek from the Muslim community in the search for genuine terrorist suspects.

The same pragmatic considerations, as well, of course, ones of justice and international law, should apply to legislation pushed through in the UK without any proper parliamentary scrutiny by the Blair government. The UK’s Anti-Terrorism, Crime, and Security Act, which has the same broad aim as Bush’s USA Patriot Act, permits the indefinite detention without trial - internment, by another name - of non-Britons whom David Blunkett, the UK home secretary, “reasonably” (the word was not included in the original bill) believes are terrorists or have “links” with an international terrorist group, or are “a risk” to national security.

“Terrorism” is now defined extremely broadly in law, covering “the use or threat of action” designed to influence the government or to advance a “political, religious, or ideological” cause. Such action includes the threat of committing “serious damage to property”.

Internees under the new act can appeal within three months to a Special Immigration Appeals Commission which reviews cases after a period of six months. However, though the commission has been given the status of a court, defendants will not know the evidence against them and there is nothing save the conscience of its members to prevent it from being little more than a rubber stamp to the home secretary’s fiat.

Justice, the British section of the international commission of jurists, and Liberty, the civil rights group, are separately challenging at the European human rights court the order tabled by Blunkett and so meekly agreed by the British parliament. They could point to the cynical opportunism by which the government used the act - apparently needed as matter of urgency to save the nation - to attach a host of other measures far broader in scope than any fight against terrorism.—Dawn/The Guardian News Service.