GENEVA, Oct. 19, 2006- The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) said that a controversial new anti-terror law approved by President George W. Bush this week undermined international humanitarian law.

ICRC President Jakob Kellenberger warned that the Military Commissions Act "disrupts" part of the Geneva Conventions that are regarded as "elementary considerations of humanity".

"Our preliminary reading of the new legislation raised news concerns and questions," Kellenberger said in an interview published on the humanitarian agency's website.

The new law signed by Bush on Tuesday allows secret overseas CIA prisons, harsh interrogation practices and military trials as weapons against suspected terrorists.

The measure, which US lawmakers approved last month after a bitter election-year debate over national security and civil liberties, also allows the United States to detain alleged terrorists indefinitely, US officials said.

Kellenberger raised concerns about the "very broad definition" of "'an unlawful enemy combatant' and the fact that there is not an explicit prohibition on the admission of evidence obtained by coercion".

The new US law also omitted parts of a key section common to all parts of the Geneva Conventions, Article 3, prohibiting humiliating and degrading treatment and denial of the right to fair trial, while retaining others, Kellenberger said.

"This distinction between the different violations disrupts the integrity of common Article three."

"Over time, the protections enunciated in common Article three came to be regarded as so fundamental to preserving humanity in war that its rules are now referred to as "elementary considerations of humanity" that must be observed in any type of armed conflict," the ICRC chief added.

Kellenberger underlined that it was "a minimum" that countries are bound to apply in its entirety.

Until now, US authorities have explicitly upheld Article three of the Geneva Conventions, notably recognising it as "the minimum legal standard applicable to persons detained in the fight against terrorism" after a Supreme Court ruling in June, he added.

The interview also dealt with a recent US Department of Defense directive on detention and a new Army field manual on interrogation, as well as the disclosure of the CIA detention programme.

"The ICRC is carefully examining these developments and is in a dialogue with the US Government regarding the legal and practical impact they could have," Kellenberger said.

Kellenberger welcomed the recent transfer of 14 terror suspects from secret detention to the US military base in Guantanamo Bay, where they were visited by Red Cross delegates last week to check on their conditions.

"This is perhaps the issue on which the change has been most significant," he said.

"The US authorities have also said that there are no longer any persons held in undisclosed CIA places of detention."