US President Barack Obama acknowledges a "deep disagreement" with the former administration, including Vice President Dick Cheney, on national security matters.

"I think when it comes to vice president Cheney, he and I have a deep disagreement about what's required to keep the American people safe," Obama said in an interview CBS television broadcast on Monday.

"I think that disagreement has been amply aired and certainly he has a right to voice his opinions. I would argue that our policies are making the American people safer, and that some of the policies that he's promoted in the past have not," he added.

The remarks come in response to Cheney's sharp-tongued criticism of Obama's decision to shut down the notorious detention center at Guantanamo Bay, and end controversial interrogation tactics authorized by his predecessor George W. Bush.

In April, Cheney disparaged Obama's administration for exposing bare memos and other documents approving the harsh techniques, including waterboarding, employed against terror suspects in US-run detention centers in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Gitmo.

He described the ban on rough interrogations as "recklessness cloaked as righteousness" and said the new president's decision to reverse the anti-terror measures taken by the Bush administration was "unwise in the extreme."

Bush critics question the former administration's warnings of imminent threats from extremists, blasting their insistence on its harsh stance as an inseparable part of the Bush-termed war on terror.

Earlier in June, incumbent CIA director Leon Panetta slammed former vice president Dick Cheney, saying he was hoping for the US to be attacked again.

"It's almost as if he's wishing that this country would be attacked again, in order to make his point. I think that's dangerous politics," Panetta said in an interview published in the New Yorker.

MRS/MD