The Red Cross said on Friday it was pressing the US to give it access to prisoners held in secret jails as part of the US war on terror.
"We have said that undisclosed detention is a major concern for us," Jakob Kellenberger, president of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), told a news conference.
"We are already visiting very many detainees under US authorities in Guantanamo, Iraq and Afghanistan ... We continue to be in an intense dialogue with them with the aim of getting access to all people detained in the framework of the so-called war on terror," he said.
Human-rights groups accuse the CIA of running secret prisons in eastern Europe and covertly transporting detainees. They say incommunicado detention often leads to torture.
John Bellinger, the US State Department's legal adviser, acknowledged to reporters in Geneva on Thursday that the ICRC does not have access to all detainees held by US forces, but refused to discuss alleged secret detention centers.
The ICRC has been pressing the administration of US President George W. Bush for two years for information about and access to what the Red Cross calls "an unknown number of people captured as part of the so-called global war on terror and held in undisclosed locations."
In Washington, State Department deputy spokesman Adam Ereli said the US provided access to most of its detainees.
"The vast majority are treated consistent with the Geneva Conventions. There is a very small, limited number that are not because of the extraordinary threat that they pose," he said.
Ereli declined to say how many detainees posed an "extraordinary" threat.
"Most of them, the vast majority of them, even though we're not legally required to do so, we have treated them and considered them subject to the Geneva Conventions to the point where the ICRC can visit them," he said.
Meanwhile, the Defense Department says it invited a European critic of the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to visit the prison camp but would not allow her to interview terrorist suspects detained there.
The invitation was extended to Anne Marie Lizin, a Belgian representative of the 55-nation Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE).
The Pentagon did not say whether she had accepted or had set a visit date.
Lizin submitted a report to the OSCE in July that demanded the US government close the Guantanamo Bay facility and return the detainees to their home countries.
Lizin, Socialist president of the Belgian Senate in addition to being an OSCE representative, said in her report that keeping the camp open was damaging the reputation of the US and causing the "radicalization" of detainees.
A Pentagon statement announcing the decision to invite Lizen said she would be permitted to "observe operations at the facilities" and ask questions of the command, staff and US officials who would accompany her.
The Pentagon has refused to allow any international organization other than the International Committee of the Red Cross to have access to the Guantanamo detainees.
Red Cross officials visit Guantanamo regularly.
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