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CIA flights cloud Steinmeier's trip to U.S

KEHL AM RHEIN, Germany, Nov. 28 (UPI) -- Germany's Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier will pressure Washington over claims secret CIA flights with kidnapped terror suspects stopped in Germany.

"A foreign minister has to evaluate facts, not newspaper articles. But what one can read is indeed cause for concern," Steinmeier said in an interview with the German weekly Bild am Sonntag, a day before he would make his first official visit to the United States.

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Several media reports and a German TV channel claim the CIA has operated up to 80 secret flights to and from Germany. Most planes allegedly touched down on Berlin-Schoenefeld Airport, the U.S. Air Force Base Ramstein and on Frankfurt's Rhein-Main Airport.

These so-called "rendition flights" allegedly moved al-Qaida and other Islamist terror suspects to secret prisons in Eastern Europe and Asia where they can be interrogated and tortured beyond the reach of international human rights legislation. New York-based NGO Human Rights Watch has said such secret prisons exist in Poland and Romania.

The prisons would violate the European Convention on Human Rights; the Convention, ratified in 1950 by the Council of Europe, secures basic human rights and freedoms for people in its 46 member states.

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The allegations come at a bad time for newly appointed conservative German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who has vowed to better relations with Washington.

The CIA flights weigh heavily on Steinmeier's trip. All main German parties have said they expect the freshly appointed foreign minister to seek answers in Washington. Most major German newspapers published editorials putting Steinmeier under pressure.

Officials in Washington have so far not commented on the reports. They did claim, however, that the United States did not use torture when interrogating terror suspects. Several alleged host countries have denied that such secret prisons existed on their territories.

The center-left Sueddeutsche Zeitung from Munich said the new German government was surprisingly timid about the reports of secret CIA prisons and torture in Europe. "Other EU governments are more self-confident and loyal to their principles. Merkel and Steinmeier are vacillating," the paper wrote.

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