Washington - Former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other senior officials were directly responsible for the abusive interrogations of detainees in Abu Ghraib in Iraq, Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and Afghanistan, a Senate report released Thursday concluded.

The report by a bipartisan panel of the Senate Armed Services Committee is a searing critique of the US military's interrogation techniques and the officials who allowed the abuse to take place.

The administration of President George W Bush has consistently denied that the United States subjects detainees to torture or abuse, but has conceded that it does use tough interrogations to extract information from suspected terrorists about other possible plots.

"The abuse of detainees in US custody cannot simply be attributed to the actions of "a few bad apples," acting on their own," the report, issued jointly by Democrat Carl Levin and Republican John McCain - a prisoner of war who was tortured in North Vietnam - said.

"The fact is that senior officials in the United States government solicited information on how to use aggressive techniques, redefined the law to create the appearance of their legality, and authorized their use against detainees," it said.

The administration's policies "damaged our ability to collect accurate intelligence that could save lives, strengthened the hand of our enemies, and compromised our moral authority," said the report by the 25-member panel, which included 12 Republicans.

Most of the report, which was the result of an 18-month inquiry, is classified and only a portion was released Thursday. Many of the officials named have either left the government, or soon will. Some of the details have been earlier made public after committee hearings in June and September.

One of the conclusions stated that the abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 - which involved interrogation techniques such as stripping detainees, placing them in stress positions and using military dogs to intimidate them - appeared in Iraq "only after they had been approved for use" in Afghanistan and Guantanamo Bay.

While these harsh methods had been approved in 2002, they were later rescinded by Rumsfeld, much before the abuses at Abu Ghraib took place. But the report still stated that Rumsfeld's authorization of aggressive interrogation techniques "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in US military custody."

"What followed was an erosion in standards dictating that detainees be treated humanely."

Keith Urbahn, a spokesman for Rumsfeld, dismissed what he called the report's "unfounded allegations."

"Because of irresponsible charges by a few individuals in positions of responsibility in Congress, millions of people around the world have been left to believe that the United States condones torture," Urbahn was quoted as saying by the New York Times. (dpa)