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"They ruled to allow the Shin Bet to continue to use limited physical force against the detainee Khader Mubarak for the continuation of his investigation," the spokesman said.
Israeli media reports said Mubarak, from Halhoul village in the West Bank, was a member of the military arm of the militant Islamic group Hamas and had information which could prevent attacks against Israeli targets.
The ruling follows a separate High Court decision last week to overturn an interim court order barring the Shin Bet from using force to extract information from a suspected militant of the Islamic Jihad group.
That decision drew the attention of the United Nations Committee against Torture. One U.N. source described the court ruling as "institutionalising torture."
In Sunday's hearing, Mubarak had charged he had been tortured by Shin Bet police and petitioned the court to stop it.
"The detainee appealed to the court last week...claiming Shin Bet interrogators had deprived him of sleep, held him in painful positions with his hands stretched behind his back and his arms shackled in a painful fashion. He also claimed his head was covered with a sack," Israel's Itim news agency said.
Itim said state prosecutors denied the Shin Bet had held Mubarak in painful positions but said depriving him of sleep and covering his eyes were "essential" for the investigation.
"The judges...allowed the Shin Bet to deprive the suspect of sleep during his interrogation and to cover his head with a sack," Itim said.
A 1987 Israeli commission ruled the Shin Bet could use "moderate physical pressure" in interrogations and "increased physical pressure" when an attack was imminent. Human rights groups have said the commission's report sanctioned torture.
Ion Iliescu, Romania's leader since the overthrow of Ceausescu in 1989 and a former senior official in the Communist Party, conceded defeat soon after the polls closed Sunday evening.
The victory of Constantinescu, combined with the victory two weeks ago of his opposition coalition, called the Democratic Convention, in parliamentary elections creates a totally new political alignment in Romania. Since the collapse of communism in 1989, Romania has been the only country in Central and Eastern Europe to elect governments of former Communists repeatedly and to shun opposition forces.
The dumping of Iliescu, 66, reflected deep disillusionment among all sectors of society with status-quo policies that brought about falling living standards and economic decline even as a coterie of former Communists around the president flourished.
Many Romanians were bitter that they were faring so badly while people in other former Communist countries, like Hungary and Poland, were forging ahead -- with average salaries three times as large and much less inflation.
Addressing chanting crowds that flowed into University Square downtown on SUnday night, a smiling and emotional Constantinescu appeared on the balcony of one of the university buildings and promised "the young, the mature and the elderly" that "there will be no more sacrificing of generations."
The crowd chanted "Down with the Communists!" and "We are home!" in the street where demonstrators were shot by Ceausescu's forces in December 1989. Sunday, the crowd roared approval when Constantinescu said, "I pay homage to those who died here in 1989 for freedom."
Then, in a symbolic gesture that indicated a new era had opened in Romania, an Orthodox priest stepped onto the balcony, and in a deep voice that echoed through the night air, offered a prayer.
In acknowledging defeat, Iliescu said that he and his party, the Party of Social Democracy, would provide a critical but constructive opposition.
The victory and concession statements were made before any formal vote count but after national television, which is controlled by the government, announced an exit poll that gave Constantinescu 53 percent of the vote and Iliescu 41 percent.
Sunday's election was a runoff, after Iliescu won 32 percent of the vote and Constantinescu 28 percent in the first round two weeks ago.
For educated, urban voters, Sunday's vote represented a critical juncture, a chance to catch up with the rest of the region and to step out of what many consider a demeaning status quo.
"The future of Romania is at stake -- it's as simple as that," Yolanda Stenaloiu, director of the Independent Journalism Center and a television interviewer during the campaign, said before the outcome was announced. "If Iliescu is re-elected it will delay our future for another four years. If not, our future will start today."
In strident campaign television advertisements redolent with the Marxist ideology in which he specialized under the Communist regime, Iliescu contended that workers' factories and farmers' homes would be handed back to their pre-World War II owners if Constantinescu prevailed. Iliescu called his opponent a "closet monarchist."
Since the first round of the presidential vote two weeks ago, the third major political party -- the Union for Social Democracy, led by Petre Roman, a former prime minister and ally of Iliescu -- has backed the challenger. Other parties, including nationalist groups, have also deserted Iliescu.
The campaigning between Iliescu, 66, and Constantinescu, 55, has been as much about the past as the future. In four television debates last week, Constantinescu said that much had still to be explained about what happened in 1989, when Ceausescu was deposed and executed by firing squad. Constantinescu said that the government must reveal the truth about the deaths of 1,500 who demonstrated against the Communists during that period.
In order to attract voters, Constantinescu has made an array of promises in a "Contract with Romania" that will be almost impossible to keep -- including lowering taxes and giving generous housing loans. He said in the debates that he would finance those programs by clamping down on the black market and catching tax evaders, including the many casinos in Bucharest, the capital.
But economists say that voters are not likely to experience rapid improvements in their well-being and that economic conditions are likely to get worse before they get better.
Even so, as younger voters went to the polls Sunday, many of them said they were prepared for sacrifice in order to insure a sounder future.
Christiana David, 22, a political science student, voted Sunday in Saint Sava High school, a few blocks from the central square in Bucharest where Ceausescu made his last public appearance in 1989 before being chased away by a crowd of tens of thousands of demonstrators.
"I voted for change," she said. "I want something new that would give people a chance to hope and to make Romania a different world for my child."
More than 80,000 people tooted horns, waved flags and popped open champagne bottles in Bucharest's central University Square. Disco music filled the air while people hugged each and shouted: "We won, we won."
Exit polls said Constantinescu led by around eight per cent in Sunday's presidential run-off race, ousting incumbent Ion Iliescu, a senior communist official under dictator Nicolae Ceausescu.
Firecrackers lit the sky and the crowd cheered and shouted "Emil, Emil" and "Victory, victory" when Constantinescu emerged onto a balcony of the University building to address the crowd.
"We are at home now. This is the place where we were born when others gave their lives for freedom," Constantinescu said.
University square was the traditional gathering place for rallies organised by opponents of communist authority and the site of bloody shootings during the 1989 revolt.
For many opposition supporters Constantinescu's victory was a triumphant finale to the 1989 revolution which they believe was hijacked and undermined by Iliescu's ex-communist backers.
"Iliescu out, Iliescu out" shouted the crowd.
A group of teenagers caught a stray dog and attached a poster of Iliescu to its tail. Many of those in the square had bottles which they passed around in the fiesta atmosphere.
"I will never betray you and I will fight for justice," Constantinescu said from the balcony to the cheering crowd.
People in the square knelt while an Orthodox priest said a prayer. Candles were lit at crosses marking the spots where victims of the 1989 revolt were killed.
Similar rallies were held in major cities across the country to celebrate Constantinescu's victory.
Thousands of people in the Transylvanian cities of Cluj, Brasov and Baia Mare waved flags, beat drums and shouted "Victory, victory," local reporters said.
Several thousand rallied in the western city of Timisoara, the cradle of the 1989 revolt and a stronghold of Romania's opposition.
The survey put Constantinescu ahead by eight percent. The victory, if confirmed, will end the grip ex-communists have held on power in the Balkan country since the 1989 revolution.
A clearly disappointed Iliescu appeared live on private television immediately after the exit poll was released to concede defeat and congratulate Constantinescu for his victory.
"The forces which have won must assume responsibility for tackling the profound problems of the country. I hope they will do it with professionalism and without vendetta," he said.
A second exit poll by the largest private television station put the margin of victory for the veteran anti-communist challenger at seven percent.
Constantinescu's triumph ends seven years of rule by ex-communists in the only Eastern European country not to have elected opposition forces in the modern era.
"These must not be empty promises," Prime Minister John Bruton of Ireland told delegates at the closing of the World Food Summit, the last big U.N.-organized conference of the decade.
The refugee crisis in Zaire weighed heavily on the five-day meeting, as just one of the many obstacles to feeding all the world's people -- the bold pledge made at the last such gathering 22 years ago in the same hall.
"I hope and pray that this time we can get it right," said Eugene Whelan, Canada's former agriculture minister and a participant in the 1974 conference at the U.N. Food and Agriculture Organization.
The seven-point plan adopted by the 194 nations at this summit sets out to halve the number of people without access to sufficient food by 2015. It also urged fewer trade barriers for food and opposed using food aid as a political tool -- leading to denunciations of embargoes by a host of speakers, including Pope John Paul II and Cuban leader Fidel Castro.
Castro, who is scheduled to meet the pope on Tuesday, told a final news conference that a possible papal trip to Cuba would be a "very important event" that could "have repercussions on international public opinion" regarding the 34-year U.S. embargo against his island nation.
He also appealed to President Clinton to follow the spirit of the Food Summit plan and halt the "economic war waged" against Cuba.
America "can't even sell one aspirin to help with a headache or some medicine against cancer to save a life," Castro said. "I think this is a crime against humanity."
The summit plan, however, is only a set of non-binding guidelines. Some people openly questioned the value of staging costly international gatherings without sharper requirements for action.
Activists and researchers also challenged U.N. predictions that improved growing techniques and food distribution could keep pace with world hunger.
Disputes arose over one of the United States' main goals: promoting biotechnology to seek hardier and healthier crops. The European Union is considering blocking imports of genetically altered corn -- a potential blow for U.S. growers and biotechnology companies.
The final news conference was disrupted by a half-dozen protesters opposed to genetic engineering. "This is a farce," one of the protesters cried as security guards hustled them out of the hall.
As in previous U.N. conferences, population control emerged as a controversial point.
The pope inaugurated the summit by calling for an "end to the sophism that affirms that being large in number is condemning one self's to be poor."
But many speakers clearly linked population control to efforts to try to control hunger around the world, as the population grows from 5.7 billion to a projected 8.7 billion by 2030.
The Vatican and some Muslim nations included reservations in the final documents, pointing out their opposition to support of artificial birth control and abortion. The United States noted its position that it opposes enshrining right to food as a U.N.-recognized human right, fearing a flurry of lawsuits on behalf of the poor.
There appeared no end to the human tide as an estimated 400,000 refugees still on the Zairian side wearily hauled their ragged bundles along the road home.
By midday Sunday, the United Nations estimated up to 300,000 had streamed into this border town. At least that many remained on the Zairian side and were flocking over the frontier at a rate of more than 200 a minute.
Overwhelmed by the unrelenting flood, aid agencies virtually gave up attempts to distribute food on the Rwandan side of the border, preferring instead to spread supplies around the country to the returnees' home villages.
The line of men, women and children stretched back 25 miles through green, winding hills from a now-deserted refugee camp in Zaire and over the border into Gisenyi.
Once through the bottleneck at this lakeside border crossing, some of the refugees were fanning out into the hills to head for homes they have not seen since 1994.
The refugees fled Rwanda 2 1/2 years ago, fearing retribution after a Hutu-led government presided over the massacre of a half-million Tutsis.
Hutu militias in the refugee camps in Zaire virtually held the refugees prisoner until Thursday, when an attack by Zairian rebels sent the militias fleeing into the hills and the refugees on the way home.
"They are moving very slowly, but are anxious to get home,'' said Michele Quintaglie, a World Food Program spokeswoman in Nairobi, Kenya. "We have to move quickly to get food to their homes.''
The refugees' unexpected return has overtaken an international effort to assemble a military force to distribute aid and create safe corridors to allow them home.
An additional 600,000 Rwandan Hutu refugees remain cut off from aid in hills south of Goma near the Zairian towns of Bukavu and Uvira. But Rwandan leaders say there is no longer any need for military intervention, calling instead for aid in resettling refugees.
U.S. Defense Secretary William Perry said plans for the international force were still on, but that the United States and its partners in the Canadian-led force will discuss the ramifications of the refugees' return.
"It will not eliminate the need for humanitarian support, (but) it will substantially change the nature of that need,'' Perry said.
By The Associated Press
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