Bush: Taliban Get Geneva Protections

President George W. Bush will apply the protections of the Geneva Convention to Taliban suspects in U.S. custody but not to al-Qaida or other terrorist suspects, the White House spokesman said Thursday.

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Spokesman Ari Fleischer said the Taliban fighters who are being held are covered by the 1949 Geneva Convention because Afghanistan was one of the signers of that treaty.

The decision affects the more than 180 detainees who are being held at the U.S. Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Two administration officials said the decision will help make sure that if U.S. soldiers are captured in times of war, they'll be given the protections of the Geneva Convention. Under the agreement, such prisoners cannot be compelled to give more than their name, rank and serial number and cannot be held without trial.

The Bush administration has said the detainees in Cuba are being treated humanely, no matter what their legal status is. But heavy criticism has come from international human rights groups and from allied nations, which say all captives taken in times of war deserve international protections that were designed for that purpose.

But Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld responded to that argument by saying terrorist suspects taken in the war in Afghanistan did not fight by traditional rules of war.

Those rules include fighting as a member of a specific state and fighting with weapons clearly exposed, rather than posing as a civilian.

Critics of Rumsfeld's argument said his argument may be true of al-Qaida suspects, but Taliban suspects fought for a recognized government with traditional war tactics.

"Al-Qaida is an international terrorist group and cannot be considered a state party to the Geneva Convention," said Ari Fleischer, White House spokesman.

New Captives Arrive In Cuba

The first planeload of al-Qaida and Taliban captives, reported to be 28 men, in more than two weeks arrived in Cuba on Thursday.

U.S. troops at Guantanamo Bay have finished building temporary cells to double the occupancy for suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fighters.

Until Thursday, the high-security compound held 158 suspects in open-air cells with walls of chain-link fence.

Military officials said they've had few problems with what they've called the most dangerous fighters in Afghanistan, but NBC News reported Thursday that there have been cases of captives throwing feces and urine at their guards.

A plane carrying the latest group of detainees took off from the U.S. military forward operating base in the southern Afghan city of Kandahar late Thursday local Afghan time.