GENEVA, Jan 30: A leading human rights group warned on Thursday that international humanitarian laws which protect civilians and prisoners in wartime could be weakened by an attempt to re-examine them under US pressure.

US officials last year dismissed the laws — the Geneva Conventions — as outdated, and Washington rejected the need to apply them to Afghan and suspected Al Qaeda detainees held at its Guantanamo Bay naval base.

Kenneth Roth, executive director of Human Rights Watch (HRW), told AFP that the issues tackled at a meeting in the United States this week to discuss international humanitarian laws also related to civilian targets in war zones.

The “informal” meeting of defence ministry experts, academics and humanitarian officials coincided with a massive US military build-up in the Gulf region and the threat of an intervention in Iraq.

Roth said he feared that the discussion on the 1949 Geneva Conventions could open up “giant loopholes”.

Human Rights Watch, Amnesty International, and the Lawyers Committee for Human Rights wrote last month to the Swiss government, the depositary state for the Geneva Conventions and co-organiser of the meeting, to complain that they were excluded from the discussion. The two-day meeting at Harvard University which began on Wednesday involved 25 governments, as well as the United Nations and International Committee of Red Cross (ICRC) officials, Swiss authorities said.

The ICRC is the guardian of the 1949 Geneva Conventions, surveying their application in conflict areas. Washington has been at odds with the ICRC over the detainees in Guantanamo Bay.

Roth said he feared that without checks, governments would allow new interpretations of the laws even if they did not change the text.

“They are addressing a series of basically US arguments for why the Geneva Conventions don’t really apply or basically need to be interpreted differently, mainly in fighting terrorism,” Roth said.—AFP