UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) - The U.N. investigator on torture said Friday he was waiting to see whether a new U.S. administration would change Washington's policy of not allowing him into its prisons in Iraq.
The United States has turned down two requests by Manfred Nowak to visit facilities where it holds thousands of Iraqis suspected of involvement in attacks against its troops.
"They were very clear in saying at the moment we won't change. Might change under a new administration," Nowak, the U.N. special rapporteur on torture, told reporters.
Republican John McCain and Democrat Barack Obama face off in a Nov. 4 U.S. presidential election. The winner takes office on Jan. 20.
Nowak, speaking at a news conference after reporting to the U.N. General Assembly, said Britain had agreed to let him into its detention facilities in Iraq but that British forces now held very few prisoners.
The U.S. military in Iraq said in August it was holding just under 21,000 detainees, but has since said the number is decreasing because it is steadily releasing more people than it is arresting as violence declines in Iraq.
An international outcry erupted in 2004 after images of prisoner abuse by U.S. military personnel at Abu Ghraib prison, west of Baghdad. No one has been held at Abu Ghraib for the past two years.
Nowak, who has spoken to former prisoners now in Jordan, said he had not recently received allegations of torture in U.S. prisons in Iraq. "I think that the situation definitely has improved," he said. "It's better than the general conditions of detention in Iraqi prisons."
Iraq has invited Nowak to visit its prisons, but he said there was no agreement yet on when.
The legal basis for U.S. detentions in Iraq -- a U.N. Security Council resolution authorizing troops to hold anyone they consider a threat indefinitely and outside the reach of Iraqi courts -- expires at the end of this year.
U.S. officials say they are scrambling to meet that deadline to conform with Iraqi law and that after Jan. 1 all future prisoners will be charged in Iraqi court.
Nowak said the United States would like to transfer detainees to Iraqi prisons but under international law was obliged to make sure they did not then risk being tortured.
"To my knowledge the risk of torture in Iraqi facilities is fairly high," he said.
Nowak, an Austrian law professor who has served as torture rapporteur since 2004, can only visit a country's prisons by invitation of its government. This year he has visited Denmark and Moldova and is due to go to Equatorial Guinea next month.
Despite improvements in some regions since a landmark U.N. human rights declaration was launched 60 years ago, he said, "Torture and ill treatment is still practiced on a widespread, partly even systematic and routine level in many countries around the world." (Editing by Philip Barbara)
