Washington: The Iraqi prisoners abuse at the Abu Ghraib prison was a big blow to American diplomacy on Iraq when President George W Bush met with European leaders to mobilise more support to the interim Government of Iraq, US Secretary of State Colin Powell has said.

"Abu Ghraib was a big hit. There is no doubt about it. The President said so. I have said so," Powell told CBS-TV yesterday (Jun 28, 2004) when asked whether Abu Ghraib was a problem when he met with his European counterparts.

"It is also absolutely clear that the President never, in any way condoned the use of torture. And I think what we are doing now is examining this entire matter from the ground up to see if instructions were not followed, to see where accountability should lie for what happened at Abu Ghraib," he said.

When it was pointed out to him that because of Abu Ghraib the UN Security Council refused to give immunity to American soldiers for their actions in Iraq, Powell said, "We would have preferred to see a rollover for another year but frankly, Abu Ghraib made it difficult for some Security Council members to vote positively on that. So we thought it would be better not to have a vote at all."

Powell said what those soldiers did was unacceptable and some of them were being court martialed now.

"In my conversations with my European friends or other friends around the world, what I say to them is that we were devastated by what we saw at Abu Ghraib, but now watch what a democracy does when it has a problem like this. How we use our laws to get to the bottom of this...," he said.