Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved in December 2002 a number of severe measures, including the stripping of prisoners at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and using dogs to frighten them. He later rescinded those tactics and signed off on a shorter list of ``exceptional techniques,'' including 20-hour interrogations, face slapping, stripping detainees to create ``a feeling of helplessness and dependence,'' and using dogs to increase anxiety.

The State Department report also harshly attacked the treatment of prisoners in such countries as Syria and Egypt, where the United States has shipped terrorism suspects under a practice known as ``rendition.''

An Australian citizen has alleged that under Egyptian detention he was hung by his arms from hooks, repeatedly shocked, nearly drowned and brutally beaten. Most of his fingernails were missing when he later arrived at Guantanamo Bay.

Bush administration officials have said they never intend for captives to be tortured and seek pledges from foreign governments that they will treat detainees humanely.

But rights advocates said reports of harsh interrogation techniques by the US military and the CIA during the war on terrorism have undermined the moral authority of the United States to comment on abuses by others.

Tom Malinowski, Washington advocacy director of Human Rights Watch, said autocrats can now push back and assert that the tactics criticized by the State Department are routinely used by the US. ``Throughout the debate on detainee abuses, the administration has been in denial about the international consequences of the legal decisions that have been in made in the terrorism context,'' he said.

Michael Kozak, acting assistant secretary of state for democracy, human rights and labor, said President George W Bush ``has been very clear on the issue of torture, which is we are against it - and torture by anyone's common-sense definition of it, not some fancy definition.'' But he acknowledged that events at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq in particular ``were a stain on the honor'' of the United States.

``As we say to people, no country has a perfect human rights record, and certainly not the United States. We have problems, too, not just overseas but policemen [in the US] abuse prisoners. It happens,'' Kozak said.

He added that the question ``is not whether you have human rights abuses - it's what you do about them when they occur.''

He noted that soldiers who abused prisoners at Abu Ghraib are being court-martialed, and the tactics used at Guantanamo ``have now been challenged in our courts, and successfully challenged in our courts.''

In its lengthy report, the State Department described as torture the interrogation techniques of a number of key Washington allies that appeared similar to the accusations involving detainees held by the United States - though in many cases the other countries used more extreme methods.

In Egypt, the report said, the police and members of the intelligence service stripped and blindfolded victims and doused them with cold water.

THE WASHINGTON POST