The United States vowed never to condone torture on Friday as the UN opened its first public examination of the US record on torture since President George W. Bush unleashed a "war on terror."

"US criminal law and treaty obligations prohibit torture and the United States will not engage in it or condone it," top US human rights official Barry Lowenkron told the 10-member UN Committee on Torture.

Washington is committed to eradicating torture and other cruel and inhuman treatment, said Lowenkron, the US State Department's assistant secretary for human rights and labour.

"This is not just a legal obligation. We are fulfilling a higher moral obligation which our nation has embraced since its earliest days," Lowenkron said.

Some 30 officials from the US State Department, the Pentagon and Department of Homeland Security were expected to face difficult questions in the public hearings Friday and Monday.

Human rights groups allege abuse and ill-treatment are being used in secret, in contravention of the International Convention Against Torture banning torture and cruel, inhumane or degrading treatment.

"This is going to be the very first time that the United States is going to be held internationally accountable for its record since the fight against terror began in 2001," Jennifer Daskal, an advocacy director for Human Rights Watch, told journalists.

The UN committee, made up of legal experts, regularly reviews the record of the 141 countries that have ratified the Convention Against Torture.

Its findings on the United States are expected to be released on May 19.

The US Government last appeared in a regular cross-examination before the committee in 2000, well before it implemented tougher measures to detain and interrogate terror suspects after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

"The US Government is not only failing to take steps to eradicate torture, it is actually creating a climate in which torture and other ill-treatment can flourish, including by trying to narrow the definition of torture," said Amnesty International official Curt Goering.

The spotlight in Geneva is expected to fall on a series of memos and statements in the United States effectively redefining torture, according to human rights groups.

In 2004, the US Justice Department withdrew legal guidance intended for CIA interrogators arguing that physical pain amounting to torture had to be "equivalent in intensity to the pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death."

But Justice Department lawyers argued earlier this year that freshly amended legislation banning cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment of detainees does not apply to terror suspects held at the US military's detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

In March, a Defence Department official said the United States was considering formally barring the use of any evidence gained through torture in special military trials of terror detainees, potentially addressing another key complaint.

US detention policy is also expected to come under scrutiny in Geneva, including the existence of secret detention centres where terror suspects are being held.

Source: China Daily