WASHINGTON, Dec 21: US Vice President-elect Joseph Biden has refused to rule out the possibility of prosecuting former defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other high officials for prisoner abuse in Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo prisons.

Mr Biden, in an interview to ABC News on Sunday, however, said that a decision whether or not to prosecute the officials would have to be taken by the US Justice Department.

Last week, the US Senate Armed Services Committee issued a unanimous report saying that the prisoner abuse at Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, and at prisons around the world was a direct and indirect result of decisions made by Mr Rumsfeld and other high officials.

Abu Ghraib is a prison in Iraq where US military authorities imprisoned thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians to prevent them from fighting US troops. Guantanamo is a US prison facility in Cuba where suspected terrorists are imprisoned. Both prisons acquired international notoriety for abusing prisoners and for using torture to break them.

Asked should Mr Rumsfeld and other US officials be prosecuted for the abuses, Senator Biden said the committee’s report only confirmed what he had always believed and said publicly, that such abuses were committed.

But a legal decision on “whether or not a criminal act has been committed or a very, very, very bad judgment has been engaged” has to be made by the Justice Department.

“President-elect Obama and I are not sitting thinking about the past. We’re focusing on the future,” he added.

Mr Biden said that if the Justice Department decided to review these cases, the incoming administration would not oppose it.

“I’m not ruling it in and not ruling it out,” said Mr Biden when asked if he was ruling out the possibility of a review. “I just think we should look forward. I think we should be looking forward, not backwards.”

Responding to another question, Mr Biden said he had fundamental differences with the outgoing Vice President Dick Cheney who believed that the Guantanamo Bay prison should be kept open.

“Nothing (I have learned) thus far that would change my fundamental view that Guantanamo should close, number one, number two, the way in which we have conducted our policy, in terms of both surveillance as well as the detainees, has hurt our reputation around the world,” he added.

Senator Biden also referred to a US national security report which had observed that the Bush administration had “created, not dissuaded, more terrorists as a consequence of its policy” of torturing prisoners.

“Nothing I’ve learned thus far has changed my fundamental view on the constitutional as well as the practical positions we should take relative to the issues of torture and others,” he added.

Last week, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates told journalists that he had asked for an updated proposal for closing the controversial Guantanamo Bay prison in Cuba in case President-elect Barack Obama asks for one soon after taking office next month.

The Bush administration has studied the difficult issue before but could not resolve questions such as where to put the Guantanamo Bay detainees and how to resolve their cases.

Mr Gates is returning to the issue because closing the prison is an Obama priority.