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The Red Cross has met at Guantanamo Bay with 14 new "high-value detainees," including Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged mastermind of the September 11, 2001, attacks, spokesmen for the Red Cross and the Pentagon said.

The encounters apparently mark the first time the 14 detainees have met with anyone other than their captors since they were arrested, held in CIA custody at secret locations, and transferred weeks ago to Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba. Among them are the alleged architects of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole and the US Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania.

"We confirm they visited the 14. We were able to speak to them privately," Simon Schorno, spokesman in Washington of the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), said on Thursday.

Based on their discussions with detainees, the Red Cross would privately make recommendations to the US government on their treatment, Schorno said. He did not give a time frame for when the recommendations would be delivered, but stressed they would be confidential.

In addition, the Red Cross officials gave the detainees standard one-page forms to write letters to their family members, which after going through US military censorship would be delivered by the Red Cross, Schorno said in a telephone interview.

In meetings with prisoners, Red Cross officials explain that they are visiting as monitors.

"The detainee is not forced to speak to us," Schorno said. "It is up to the detainee to raise any issues that fall within our concern, for example past detentions and current conditions. It's up to the detainee to address whatever he wants to address."

The Red Cross, which arrived at Guantanamo Bay on September 25, met the 14 newest detainees this week, Navy Lieutenant Commander Jeffrey Gordon said at the Pentagon.

But even as the Red Cross wrapped up a more than two-week visit to Guantanamo Bay, the detention centre came under increasing criticism.

British Foreign Secretary Margaret Beckett, releasing Britain's annual report on human rights around the world, said holding hundreds of terror suspects at the camp for years was "unacceptable in terms of human rights" and "ineffective in terms of counterterrorism."

"It's widely argued now that the existence of the camp is as much a radicalizing and discrediting influence as it is a safeguard for security," she said.

Beckett was the highest-ranking British official to criticize the United States so directly for holding suspects for years without trial at Guantanamo. Prime Minister Tony Blair has gone no further in public than calling the camp an "anomaly" that sooner or later must end.

In response to Beckett's comments, Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman, said: "Look, we don't want Guantanamo open forever. We don't want to be the world's jailers. We certainly would look forward to the day when Guantanamo is closed.

"At the moment, it's housing some very dangerous people, including those who were responsible for the attack on this country which killed 3,000 people."

Mohammed was believed to be the No 3 al-Qaida leader before he was captured in Pakistan in 2003. Also among the 14 new detainees are Ramzi Binalshibh, who is accused of helping plan the September 11 attacks and being a lead operative for a foiled plot to crash aircraft into London's Heathrow Airport, and Abu Zubaydah, who was believed to be a link between Osama bin Laden and many al-Qaida cells before he was captured in Pakistan in 2002.

US President George W. Bush on September 6 announced they had been moved from CIA custody to Guantanamo for trial.

(China Daily October 14, 2006)