Bush vetoes bill banning harsh interrogation tactics

Washington: US President George W. Bush said on Saturday that he vetoed legislation that would ban the CIA from using harsh interrogation methods such as waterboarding to break suspected terrorists because it would end practices that have prevented attacks.

"The bill Congress sent me would take away one of the most valuable tools in the war on terror," Bush said in his weekly radio address taped for broadcast yesterday. "So today I vetoed it."

The bill he rejected provides guidelines for intelligence activities for the year and has the interrogation requirement as one provision. It cleared the House of Representatives in December and the Senate last month.

"This is no time for Congress to abandon practices that have a proven track record of keeping America safe," the president said.

"Torture is a black mark against the United States," said California Senator Dianne Feinstein, a Democrat. "We will not stop until [the ban] becomes law."

The bill would have limited CIA interrogators to the 19 techniques allowed for use by military questioners.

Bush said the CIA must retain use of "specialised interrogation procedures" that the military doesn't need. The military methods are designed for questioning "lawful combatants captured on the battlefield", while intelligence professionals are dealing with "hardened terrorists" who have been trained to resist the techniques in the Army manual, the president said.