LONDON, May 18 (Xinhuanet) -- With America's reputation at its lowest ebb in years, the US State Department published its annual promotion of human rights report, conceding the prisoner abuse scandal was a huge "cloud" over its mission, the British Telegraph newspaper reported Tuesday.

    The report summarizes actions in 101 countries to promote freedom and to end abuses, including torture, the very crime American soldiers are accused of in Iraq, the paper said.

    The paper quoted Lorne Craner, US assistant secretary of state responsible for promoting human rights and democracy, as saying that the awful images of the abuses at Abu Ghraib prison hampered America's ability to promote human rights.

    "This was a cloud obscuring what we tried to do on democracy issues. And we want to punch through the cloud and say we are not going to give up on democracy and human rights promotion," Craner was quoted as saying.

    "We got things wrong and we are going to fix it," Craner told the paper.

    The paper also said that in an implicit rebuke for the neo-conservatives at the Pentagon, who promoted the idea of transplanting democracy to the Middle East, Craner made it clear that America's mission had to be less ambitious.

    "We can't implant democracy everywhere," Craner said. Enditem