KIEV, Dec 7: Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on Wednesday that US personnel were banned from using torture anywhere in the world, in an apparent attempt to quell a raging controversy over secret CIA prisons.

Washington’s obligations under an international convention prohibiting cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment ‘extend to US personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the US or outside the US’, Ms Rice said on a visit to Kiev, Ukraine.

An aide to Ms Rice said her remarks marked ‘a clarification of policy, not a shift of policy’.

They came amid a fierce debate over allegations that the CIA used European airports during the transport of terror suspects to covert prison facilities or countries where they might be tortured.

In March, The New York Times reported that President Bush had signed a secret order, days after the Sept 11, 2001, attacks, enabling the Central Intelligence Agency to transfer terrorism suspects to countries like Pakistan, Egypt, Syria, Saudi Arabia and Jordan, which the State Department has cited for using torture.

“We do not render to countries that torture. That has been our policy, and that policy will remain the same,” President George Bush said on Tuesday.

But White House spokesman Scott McClellan repeatedly refused to say whether the United States followed up to make sure those countries lived up to promises not to use torture.—AFP