Geneva - In Switzerland the word confidentiality usually has more to do with banking than anything else, but on a hill overlooking the south-western city of Geneva, it takes on completely different meaning.

Along the corridors of the headquarters of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), staff of the 150-year-old humanitarian organization are forever engaged in "dialogue."

The dialogue is with the outside world - governments, armed groups and civilian populations - and mostly about matters such as the laws of war and the welfare of prisoners at detention centres and of civilians during conflicts. What is said is kept secret.

Confidentiality is a way of action, it is an instrument," says Francois Bugnion, who recently retired after over three decades as a senior ICRC delegate.

During his years at the organization "there was never any leakage about our activities from within the organization."

The only cases of confidential reports being made public, Bugnion and others close to the organization say, involved dissenting governmental officials who gave the information to the media.

Tasked with carrying out the most sensitive of humanitarian missions, the organization cannot appear to be anything but neutral, a core ICRC tradition.

This refusal to take a public stance in tense situations, has, however, drawn criticism from certain circles.

Is it more important to go public with information or more important to bring food and medicine to the vulnerable?" asked Bugnion, noting the existence of organizations, like Amnesty International, that can make damning statements.

In other cases, the ICRC's constant dialogue with all parties to conflicts, including flagrant violators of international law, has provoked similar disagreements.

The former president of the ICRC was really criticized after a meeting with [indicted war criminal and former Serbian leader Slobodan] Milosevic," one insider who asked not to be named, told the German Press Agency dpa.

People asked him, how could he meet with a 'butcher' and shake his hand. He said, that while he then washed his hands many times, meeting with Milosevic ensured the ICRC could continue to visit detainees and help victims."

In the years following the 1994 Rwanda genocide, the ICRC was able to visit Hutu prisoners, because their Tutsi captors had been visited by Red Cross delegates when they were in detention before coming to power.

Many of the prison officials were prisoners under the Hutus, so they remembered our visits well. They said to us: `We respect your job," a former ICRC delegate to Rwanda told dpa.

The ICRC was one of the first humanitarian organizations on the scene in Rwanda and most of the estimated 80 countries where some 12,000 of its staff have worked, including Sri Lanka and Pakistan.

The organization has facilitated the surrender of troops, as a neutral intermediary, or ferried civilians to safety amid ongoing fighting.

The trust the ICRC needs is developed over years and can collapse more easily than it is built.

A recent incident in Colombia, in which government troops used a Red Cross emblem to trick rebels, sparked concern within the organization that its neutral status there could be compromised.

Roger Mayou, the director of the Red Cross Museum in Geneva, says that during a recent trip to Argentina, he was asked to give a speech. The hall slowly filled to twice its capacity as mothers of those who "disappeared" during the years of military rule in the 1980s.

"They were still grateful to the ICRC," he explained, even though many of the missing never were found.

One is of course forced to come to terms with the failure of an organization whose mandate is to protect and assist war victims," Bugnion said of World War II in 2002, when he was still the ICRC's chief of international law.

While the ICRC had access to many prisoners of war (POWs) and was able to send them care packages, access to Jews and other civilian prisoners was largely blocked.

Nazi "Germany observed the POW rules of war, but the civilians ... they just wanted to kill them. They were seen as not human," Mayou said.

At the time, the ICRC membership concluded that little could be done and that any public statements might endanger the humanitarian work it was able to accomplish and compromise Switzerlands neutrality during the war.

This position has been questioned and criticized over the years.

On the other hand, several ICRC officials have been recognized by Israels Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial for their efforts to save Jews.

The ICRCs founding humanitarian principles, Bugnion said, were flexible, allowing for self-reflection and evolution, though the strict neutrality code, and its tools, will linger on.

Generally, the idea of confidentiality will remain," Mayou said. Otherwise, I dont know how they will work." (dpa)