WASHINGTON - A bipartisan Senate report has concluded that decisions made by former Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld were a 'direct cause' of widespread detainee abuses, and that top Bush administration officials were to blame for creating a legal and moral climate that contributed to the inhumane treatment.

The report, which was endorsed by both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Armed Services Committee, is the most forceful denunciation to date of the role that Mr Rumsfeld and other top officials played in the prisoner abuse scandals of the past five years.

In several of its key findings, the report released on Thursday accused Mr Rumsfeld and his deputies of being the principal architects of the plan to use harsh interrogation techniques on captured fighters and terrorism suspects, rejecting the administration's contention that the policies originated lower down the command chain.

'The abuse of detainees at Abu Ghraib in late 2003 was not simply the result of a few soldiers acting on their own,' the report concluded.

Instead, it said, a series of high-level decisions in the Bush administration 'conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees in US military custody.'

The document aimed its harshest criticism at Mr Rumsfeld's decision in December, 2002, to authorise the use of aggressive interrogation techniques at the US detention facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Although it was rescinded just six weeks later, the report described the Rumsfeld order as 'a direct cause for detainee abuse' at Guantanamo Bay, and concluded that it 'influenced and contributed to the use of abusive techniques, including military working dogs, forced nudity, and stress positions, in Afghanistan and Iraq.'

Read the full story in Saturday's edition of The Straits Times.