UNITED NATIONS, Nov 1: Five UN human rights experts said on Monday they could not accept US invitation to visit Guantanamo Bay for interviewing detainees at the US detention camp.

Addressing a press conference here while welcoming the US invitation a spokesperson for five human rights experts said, “We cannot accept the exclusion of private interviews with detainees as this would not only contravene the Terms of Reference for fact-finding missions by Special Procedures but also undermine the purpose of an objective and fair assessment of the situation of detainees held at the Guantanamo Bay.”

Special Procedures are set up by the Commission on Human Rights, from which the experts, who are unpaid and serve in an independent personal capacity, derive their mandates.

“We are sure that the US government will fully understand and finally agree that UN investigators are not in a position to accept the sort of guided tour to Guantanamo as have been arranged in the past for the members of Congress and media representatives,” Manfred Nowak, the special rapporteur on torture and other cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment, told a press conference at the United Nations.

Mr Nowak also pointed out that Washington has granted private interviews with detainees to the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and to the detainees’ defence lawyers.

“We are confident that the US government, which attaches great importance to the principles of independent and objective fact finding, will understand our position,” the group said in its joint statement.

The group has agreed to other conditions set by the US government ‘in a spirit of compromise’, including limiting the visit to one day, Mr Nowak said.

The date envisaged for the visit is December 6.

The initiative dates back to June 2004, when the group of special rapporteurs joined their efforts to examine the situation of detainees held in Guantanamo Bay.

Apart from Mr Nowak, the members of the group are Leandro Despouy, special rapporteur on the independence of judges and lawyers, Paul Hunt, special rapporteur on the right of everyone to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of physical and mental health, Asma Jahangir, special rapporteur on freedom of religion or belief, and Leila Zerrougui, chairperson-rapporteur of the Working Group on Arbitrary Detention.

Agencies add:

The United States has turned down a UN human rights panel’s request to provide information about its detention centres in Guantanamo Bay, as well as Afghanistan and Iraq, a report revealed on Tuesday.

Washington declined to include information on detention facilities outside US territory in its report submitted to the UN Human Rights Committee, according to the document.

The committee, made up of 18 independent experts elected by the UN General Assembly, in July 2004 pressed Washington for information about its overseas military detention centres.

However, according to the US response late last month, these fall outside the committee’s remit because they are ‘governed by the laws of war’.

Like the other 153 signatories of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, the United States is bound to submit regular reports to the committee on its implementation of what is the UN’s core human rights accord.

Washington reaffirmed its stance that the covenant only applies on US territory — something the committee has disputed in the past.

“The obligations assumed by the United States under the Covenant apply only within the territory of the United States,” said the report.

“The United States has sought to respond to the Committee’s concerns as fully as possible, notwithstanding the continuing difference of view between the Committee and the United States concerning certain matters relating to the import and scope of provision of the Covenant,” it added.

The UN committee also gathers information from nongovernmental sources.

Released detainees and advocacy groups have made regular allegations of human rights violations at the US military’s foreign detention centres, stoked by the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal in Iraq.

Controversy has raged over the Guantanamo centre, in a US military enclave in Cuba.

About 500 people are being held there, most without charges, as enemy combatants in the US war on terrorism. Most were captured in 2001 in Afghanistan.