Washington ? A still-classified list of 24 interrogation methods approved for use on Guantanamo Bay detainees includes placing prisoners in uncomfortable interrogation cells and deceiving them into thinking they are in the hands of Middle East interrogators who knew all about their culture, according to a U.S. government official.

The list, approved April 16, 2003, after debate between Pentagon lawyers and political appointees, also allows interrogators to give uncooperative prisoners food that is cold or less palatable and to isolate them from their peers, the official said.

The existence of the Guantanamo list has been previously known and a few of its methods have been previously cited in The Washington Post, including allowing interrogators to subject detainees to irritatingly hot or cold temperatures and to reverse their normal sleep patterns. But the Pentagon has refused to release the list, citing its classified status, and most of the methods have been unknown until now.

The Guantanamo techniques — including seven that go beyond standard U.S. military doctrine — appeared on an unofficial list drawn up by an Army captain and posted on the wall of Abu Ghraib prison for use by interrogators there.

But the Guantanamo list does not include some of the more severe methods that were available to interrogators in Iraq if they got proper approval, including forcing detainees to sit or stand in stressful positions, using sleep or sensory deprivation, and using military dogs to intimidate.

Nor do the Guantanamo methods approach the definitions of torture contained in recently revealed Justice Department and Pentagon legal reviews that argued such measures might be justified in certain circumstances.

Unlike in Iraq, where prisoners were accorded unambiguous prisoner of war status, the prisoners in Guantanamo were given a newly designated “unlawful enemy combatants.” They were suspected al-Qaida and Taliban fighters, captured on the Afghanistan battlefield.

President Bush said that they did not deserve prisoner of war status, but he nonetheless ordered the military to treat them in accordance with the Geneva Conventions.

Pentagon spokesman Bryan Whitman declined to comment on specific interrogation techniques. Given that the detainees were believed to have intelligence about ongoing threats to the United States, said Whitman, “it was appropriate to ask the question, should there be something else we should be doing to learn about potential attacks in the making.”

In fact, on Dec. 2, 2002, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld approved a set of more aggressive interrogation methods to be used on Mohamed al-Kahtani, a Saudi detainee who some officials believed may have been the planned 20th hijacker.

A Naval psychologist at the base protested the use of some of the techniques meant to humiliate prisoners and sought help from the Navy’s top civilian lawyer, Alberto Mora, to stop them, according to three defense officials knowledgeable about the debate.

The techniques approved by Rumsfeld were suspended Jan. 15, 2003 “out of concern for their effectiveness or appropriateness,” said Whitman.