Donald Rumsfeld, US defence secretary, on Monday said the Pentagon would move as rapidly as possible to start the military commissions of two detainees at Guantanamo Bay, paving the way for the first US military trials since the second world war.

The Pentagon had been stuck in legal limbo since a court last November halted the trial of Salid Ahmed Hamdan, Osama Bin Laden's driver, on the grounds that the military commission process did not conform with the military code of justice. An appeals court on Friday handed the Bush administration a significant legal victory on Friday by overturning that decision.