The US Justice Department released a new memo yesterday to replace a controversial document outlining how to avoid violating US and international terror statutes while inter-' rogating prisoners.

In a Dec. 30 memorandum, released early yesterday, the department stepped back from an August 2002 memo that said only the most severe types of torture were not permissible under US and international agreements against torture.

The new memo was more broad in its definition of what could be considered torture, and therefore what was unacceptable under US law and under the United Nations Convention AgainstTorture.