<< Back

US Senate Republicans Seek Deal on Terrorism Trials

By Vicki Allen
Reuters
September 12, 2006

WASHINGTON, Sept 12 (Reuters) - Senate Republicans struggled for an agreement on Tuesday on legislation to set up trials for foreign terrorism suspects as the White House lobbied for its plan that critics said could allow abusive interrogations and deprive suspects of basic rights.

With Congress rushing to produce legislation to clear the way for trials of detainees at Guantanamo Bay, Vice President Dick Cheney, White House chief of staff Josh Bolten, CIA director Michael Hayden and others were on Capitol Hill prodding senators to hew closely to the White House proposal.

Republican Sens. Lindsey Graham of South Carolina and John McCain of Arizona, who were pushing an alternative bill to expand suspects' legal rights, said there was progress on some issues. But they remained at odds over the White House's effort to limit the Geneva Convention's protections for prisoners.

"It is the big elephant in the room," Graham said of the White House plan he said could exempt the CIA from standards for treatment of prisoners.

With most Democrats and moderate Republicans expected to back the plan from McCain, Graham and Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John Warner of Virginia, Republican leaders sought a compromise to avoid potential losses when the Senate considers the legislation as soon as next week.

The House of Representatives Armed Services Committee meanwhile was schedule to vote on Wednesday on a plan that largely mirrored President George W. Bush's.

Bush, who has been under fire for harsh detentions at the Guantanamo facility and abuses at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq, needs a system to try suspects after the U.S. Supreme Court in June struck down his original plan for failing to meet U.S. judicial standards.

Bush offered a revised plan last week, but the U.S. military's top lawyers criticized it largely because it would block defendants' access to classified evidence being used to convict them.

Graham said he saw a compromise taking shape that would let defendants see secret evidence while allowing the government to "protect sources and methods" of gaining the evidence from being disclosed if the judge finds it necessary for national security.

Graham said he thought "common sense" compromises could be reached on other issues such as allowing testimony obtained by coercion and the admissibility of hearsay evidence.

The tougher policy dispute was over defining offenses in the treatment of prisoners under the Geneva Conventions, Graham and McCain said.

McCain, who was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, said he would not agree to changes that would weaken or narrow the convention's standards for humane treatment "because that sends a message to the world that we are not going to adhere fully to the Geneva Conventions" and other nations may in turn interpret the standards "to their own purposes."

<< Back