Public Safety Minister Stockwell Day accused the opposition parties Friday of repeating "false allegations" of torture made by "suspected terrorists" who are turned over to Afghan officials by Canadian troops.

Day and other Conservatives were on the defensive during questioning in the House of Commons as opposition MPs accused them of incompetence in the handling of Afghan prisoners.

Opposition MPs also said Defence Minister Gordon O'Connor should resign for adding to the confusion over how much access Canadian officials have had to the detainees.

The Afghanistan Independent Human Rights Commission, assigned to monitor detainees about two months ago, said until recently it had been denied access to prisoners in intelligence [National Directorate of Security] holding cells.

Day insisted Friday that Corrections Canada officers in Kandahar have full access to Afghan prisons and they have a mandate to report prisoner abuse.

Access to intelligence facility

"In the Sarpoza prison facility, just west of Kandahar City, there are 838 detainees there, alleged terrorists; 138 of those are kept in what's called the national security component of that particular facility.

"There are 40 alleged terrorists and other suspects in the National Directorate of Security facility, which is a separate one, and in the third facility, which is run by the Afghan police, there are 35. We've had access to those three facilities."

"The opposition should cease to make these false allegations and should cease carrying these allegations, which are brought forth by Taliban suspects," Day said.

Critics have been asking why O'Connor announced Wednesday a "new arrangement" to give Canadian officials greater access to prisoners transferred to Afghan control when other Conservatives say officials have had access all along.

During Thursday's question period, Prime Minister Stephen Harper appeared to contradict O'Connor when he said there is no formal agreement yet with Afghanistan on detainee access.

O'Connor told the Commons foreign affairs committee the day before that a deal had been struck to allow Canadian officials to check on the treatment of captured insurgents "any time they wanted."

For a over year, O'Connor insisted that the International Committee of the Red Cross was monitoring the fate of captured fighters, handed over to the notorious Afghan prison system. He was forced to apologize to the Commons last winter when the international agency publicly contradicted him.

On Wednesday, the Globe and Mail newspaper reported that a 2006 report by Canadian diplomats warned Ottawa that prisoners faced torture and extra-judiciary killings in Afghan prisons.

Calls for transfers to stop

Liberal human rights critic Irwin Cotler told CBC News Friday the government should have stopped the transfer of detainees once allegations of torture came to light.

"Alarm bells should have gone off," he said in an interview from Ottawa. "The government has appeared to be uninformed, misinforming and really has been undermining the integrity of our whole mission."

"This is not foreign policy," NDP Leader Jack Layton said Wednesday. "This is not leadership. This is chaos."

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion said everyone is confused by the government's inability to keep its story straight: "We would laugh, Mr. Speaker, if not human beings' lives were at stake."

With files from the Canadian Press