WASHINGTON, Oct 6: The White House on Thursday renewed a threat to veto a 440 billion dollar defence funding bill after the US Senate defied President George Bush by inserting anti-torture language into the legislation.

For a president who has never vetoed any legislation, vetoing a big military spending bill at a time of war could be a risky move and could stall desperately needed funding for US troops at home and overseas.

Nevertheless, White House spokesman Scott McClellan, at a press conference on Thursday, said an earlier veto threat still holds.

“We have put out a statement of administration policy saying that his advisors would recommend that he vetoes it if it contains such language,” Mr McClellan told reporters.

The administration appeared to be holding out hope it might be able to get the anti-torture language watered down – or removed outright — during negotiations between the Senate and the House of Representatives to iron out differences between their separate versions of the bill.

Similar legislation passed by the House of Representatives did not contain the anti-torture language, and negotiators from the House and Senate now must hammer out a compromise version of the bill to send to the White House for the president’s signature.

“The House legislation doesn’t include that language. It will now go to a conference committee. We will continue working with Congress to address this issue,” Mr McClellan said.

The anti-torture measure — an amendment to the defence spending bill — bars ‘cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment of persons under custody or control of the United States government’.

The bill’s chief backer, Republican Senator John McCain, acknowledged before the vote on Wednesday ‘there still seems to be significant opposition from the White House and the Department of Defence’ to his bill, but he would seek to win over opponents.

“We’ll have to keep working it,” said Mr McCain, a decorated war veteran who spent more than five years in a Vietnamese prison camp.

The bill was a response to the damaging prison abuse scandal that erupted last year following the publication of pictures that showed US military personnel humiliating and abusing inmates at Iraq’s Abu Ghraib prison.

The White House has expressed concern the legislation could ‘interfere with the president’s ability to effectively conduct the global war on terrorism’.

Mr McCain, however, said the legislation would not only ensure humane treatment of detainees, but benefit US interrogators as well.

“The effect would be that the men and women who are doing the interrogations would feel comfortable in knowing that they have exact instructions as to what they can and cannot do,” said Senator McCain, who endured torture at the hands of his North Vietnamese captors.

“The image of the United States was very badly harmed by the pictures of prisoner abuse,” said Mr McCain. “We have to send a message to the world that we will not ever allow such kind of treatment to be repeated.”

On the Senate floor, the Arizona Republican also quoted a letter sent to him recently by Army Captain Ian Fishback asking Congress to do justice to men and women in uniform. “Give them clear standards of conduct that reflect the ideals they risk their lives for,” Captain Fishback wrote.

The bill’s other top sponsor, Republican Senator Lindsey Graham — a former judge advocate general in the Air National Guard — said there is a moral imperative in adhering to stringent interrogation standards.

“We take this moral high ground to make sure that if our people fall into enemy hands, we’ll have the moral force to say, ‘You have got to treat them right’.

“If you don’t practice what you preach,” Mr Graham said, “nobody listens.” —AFP