Interrogation broke UN pact

The CIA's inspector general warned last year that interrogation procedures approved by the Bush administration could violate the UN convention against torture, it emerged yesterday.

The leaking of the inspector general's classified report represented an embarrassment for President George Bush, only a few days after he emphatically declared: "We do not torture." It also comes at a sensitive time when the vice-president, Dick Cheney, is lobbying to have the CIA exempted from legislation establishing stricter interrogation rules.

A new law sponsored by Senator John McCain - a former Republican presidential candidate and a war hero who was tortured in Vietnam - would ban inhumane treatment and oblige all US agencies to abide by international law on torture. The draft law was approved by 90 votes to nine in the Senate earlier this month, but the House of Representatives has yet to give its support and Mr Cheney has launched an aggressive effort to modify the legislation to allow the CIA to be exempted.

Negotiations are under way to resolve the impasse, after the White House threatened that Mr Bush would make his first use of the presidential veto if the McCain draft law remained unchanged.