WASHINGTON, April 12: US President George W. Bush has said that senior officials of his administration had approved the use of harsh interrogation techniques, including water-boarding, on key Al Qaeda suspects and he endorsed them.

The US president told ABC News he saw no problem with using the methods and that legal advice the government received allowed the interrogations.

“And, yes, I’m aware our national security team met on this issue. And I approved,” he said. “I don’t know what’s new about that; I’m not so sure what’s so startling about that.”

Mr Bush said that he had not only endorsed using techniques seen as torture by human rights groups but also had shared it with the American people.

“As a matter of fact, I told the country we did that. And I also told them it was legal. We had legal opinions that enabled us to do it,” he said. “And, no, I didn’t have any problem at all trying to find out what Khaled Sheikh Mohammed knew.”

The CIA has admitted using water-boarding on Khaled Sheikh Mohammed, reportedly Al Qaeda’s second-in-command, who later confessed to planning the Sept 11 2001 attacks on New York.

US media reported on Thursday that Vice-President Dick Cheney, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice attended meetings at the White House where specific interrogation techniques were approved.

“I think it’s very important for the American people to understand who Khalid Sheikh Mohammed was. He was the person who ordered the suicide attack I mean, the 9/11 attacks,” said Mr Bush while explaining why he approved using such methods against terror suspect.

“And back then, there were all kinds of concerns about people saying, ‘Well, the administration is not connecting the dots,’” he said, adding: “We started to connect the dots, in order to protect the American people.”

The media reported that senior US officials took care to insulate Mr Bush from the meetings, where water-boarding which simulates drowning sleep deprivation and slaps and pushes were approved.

Former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, former Secretary of State Colin Powell, the then CIA director George Tenet, and former attorney-general John Ashcroft also attended the meetings.

Between 2002 and 2003, the US justice department issued several memos from its Office of Legal Counsel that justified using the interrogation tactics, including ones that critics call torture.

Many of those memos have since been overruled.

In March this year, President Bush vetoed legislation that would have banned intelligence agencies using water-boarding and other techniques.

International human rights groups have condemned the Bush administration’s use of harsh interrogation techniques, saying that they amount to torture.