US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said the United States will not allow UN human rights investigators to meet with detainees at the Guantanamo prison for foreign terrorism suspects.
Mr Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference that prisoners at the US naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, were staging a hunger strike that began in early August as a successful ploy to attract media attention.
The three UN investigators, including one who focuses on torture, said yesterday they would turn down an invitation extended by the Pentagon on Friday to visit Guantanamo unless they were permitted to interview the detainees.
The invitation came nearly four years after the visits were first requested.
Mr Rumsfeld said the US government will not change its policy of giving such access to detainees only to the International Committee of the Red Cross, a neutral body that keeps its findings confidential.
"There's got to be a limit to how one does that," Mr Rumsfeld said of providing access to detainees.
"And the ICRC has been doing it for a great many years and has had complete and total access ever since Guantanamo was opened. And so we're not inclined to add (to) the number of people that would be given that extensive access."
The invitations went to Austria's Mr Manfred Nowak, special investigator on torture, Pakistan's Mr Asma Jahangir, who focuses on religious freedom, and Algeria's Mr Leila Zerrougui, who looks into arbitrary detention.