The US Senate on Tuesday voted to restrict terror suspects' access to federal court protections, while allowing them to appeal their detention and verdicts by military tribunals to federal courts.

The measure, passed by a 84-14 vote, was seen as a bipartisan compromise reached to end the debate on terror suspects' legal rights caused by a Senate vote last week which calls for totally banning court access of such people.

After the voting, the agreed measure was added to a bill which bars torture and requires humane treatment of detainees in US custody in Iraq, Afghanistan, Guantanamo Bay and elsewhere.

The bill then received unanimous support among Senators in a following vote.

Senators who support the restriction of court access said the compromised measure allows every detainee in US custody to have a day in court, but prevents them from filing court petitions which were, in their words, "often frivolous and were clogging the courts."

In other votes of the day, the Republican-controlled Senate defeated a Democratic effort which tried to pressure US President George W. Bush to outline a timetable for US troops' withdrawal from Iraq, while overwhelmingly endorsed a statement calling on the administration to explain its Iraq policy.

The outcomes of all the above votes will be added to the Senate 's version of the defense bill.

However, the House version of the defense bill does not include those provisions, nor does it include the language on the treatment of terror suspects.

As a result, it is unclear whether any of those provisions will survive negotiations between the House and the Senate and will actually end up in the final defense bill.

Source: Xinhua