Asia PR News

WASHINGTON, May 26 /PRNewswire-AsiaNet/ –

In a one-on-one interview with Bloomberg News(R) today, Secretary of State
Condoleezza Rice said that the U.S. is committed to ensuring that prisoners at
Guantanamo Bay "are able to practice their religious faith," and the U.S. has
"gone to extraordinary lengths" to protect these rights.

The Secretary of State also told Bloomberg News that she knows nothing
about charges of "alleged" abuses of the Koran, and that the FBI is looking
into claims by some detainees in 2002 that the Muslim holy book was abused as a
form of psychological torture. If "anything happened, people will be punished
for it," Secretary Rice said in an interview with Janine Zacharia of Bloomberg
News.

The Secretary of State told Bloomberg News that U.S. prison guards have
been given "official instructions" on "how to handle the Koran sensitively" and
"that story needs to be told."

News related to this interview is available real-time to users of the
Bloomberg Professional(R) service via the Bloomberg terminal at TOP GOV <GO>.

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SOURCE: Bloomberg

CONTACT: Loren Riegelhaupt of Sloane & Company,
+1-212-446-1871, or
lorenr@sloanepr.com,

for Bloomberg

Web site: http://www.bloomberg.com