WASHINGTON, Dec. 7 (UPI) -- Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's damage control trip to Europe has done little to calm the storm about the CIA's role in transporting and interrogating Islamist terrorist suspects, even though European governments had been prepared to give her the benefit of the doubt.
Rice's approach has been tough and generally unrepentant. She defended CIA "renditions," the extra-judicial practice of secretly transporting Islamist terrorist suspects to third countries for interrogation, saying that the United States does not permit torture, and the U.N. Convention against Torture "extends to U.S. personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside the United States." Her comments appeared to contradict statements by U.S. Attorney General, Alberto Gonzales, who last year said the convention did not apply to U.S. interrogations of foreigners overseas. An aide to Rice did little to straighten things out Wednesday when he said the secretary's remarks were "a clarification of policy, not a shift."
Rice also refused to address a crucial point in the furor, allegations by the New York-based Human Rights Watch and other human rights organizations of prisoner abuse in secret CIA detention camps in Eastern Europe and elsewhere. For example, when Rice visited Romania Wednesday, Foreign Minister Mihai-Razvan Ungureanu denied allegations that such prisons were located in his country. "It was never the case of Romania hosting any facilities like prisons," Ungureanu told the BBC. Rice, who had it in her power to add the weight of Washington's denial, continued to maintain her silence.
Instead, Rice signed an agreement with the Bucharest government that would allow U.S. military to use Romanian bases -- an agreement that analysts agree will bring Romania both diplomatic and economic gains.
In Germany, reports of her visit focused on Chancellor Angela Merkel's apparent misinterpretation of what Rice had told her about the "rendition" of Khaled al-Masri. The Lebanese-born German citizen, who was seized by the CIA in 2003 and flown to Afghanistan, and was eventually released in Albania. Merkel said Rice had admitted that Masri's detention had been a mistake. Aides for Rice later said the secretary had made no such admission, but had said in general terms that "if mistakes were made," they would be corrected.
But what was more significant was Merkel's obvious willingness to accept U.S. explanations at face value in spite of pressure from her own Christian Democrat party for details about CIA planes stopping over in German airports. Merkel -- who became chancellor of a right-left coalition three weeks ago -- said she was satisfied with Rice's explanations; and there was "a good basis" for cooperation between the intelligence services of the two countries. The problem, Merkel said, was to find a balance between the necessity to work in the shadows and the desirable respect for "the rules of democracy."
In London, Prime Minister Tony Blair told the House of Commons Wednesday that he "accepted entirely" Rice's assurances that renditions were applied "in accordance with international conventions." He said he knew nothing about detention camps across Europe. "I clearly know there aren't any such here," he said. However, a group of British parliamentarians from the three main political parties (Labor, Conservative, and Liberal-Democrat) are pressuring the government for more information on what the British press calls "torture flights." Conservative Member of Parliament Andrew Tyrie was quoted as saying, "There is quite a lot of evidence that something is going on, that there are flights taking place to countries where (suspects) can be tortured...We are trying to win over the hearts and minds of millions of people in the Middle East, saying that we have a better way of doing things and at the same time we seem to be sinking to the very standards that we have been criticizing."
Poland, Thailand, and Afghanistan have also been mentioned as possible camp venues, but all three have issues denials. Polish President Aleksander Kwasniewski, for example, said, "There was never that type of prison and there never will be. I am certain that no al-Qaida prisoners were ever held in Poland."
Some analysts feel that if European governments were not aware of clandestine CIA flights and "renditions" their respective intelligence services may have been more in the know. The international war on terror has raised the level of trans-Atlantic cooperation between intelligence services. "There's an element of, 'I'm shocked, shocked, that there is gambling in my casino,' about this," Tom Malinowski of the U.S. Human Rights Watch told United Press International in Washington, adding that European officials had been in touch with the group, asking for information about the flights. Malinowski said that there was "very close coordination and cooperation" between U.S. and European intelligence agencies. "If European governments really want to know what's going on, they should just ask their own security services," he said.
On Wednesday, Otto Schily, the German interior minister in the outgoing Social Democrat government, said he had been informed of Masri's rendition by the U.S. ambassador, who also advised him that Berlin should continue to deny the story even if Masri "went public." But other German sources said there were clues that the German anti-terrorist service (part of the interior ministry) had known about Masri's detention even earlier.
Meanwhile, The Washington Post quoted unnamed CIA sources as saying that Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi had personally authorized the abduction by U.S. agents on a Milan street of the militant imam Abu Omar, and his subsequent rendition to Cairo. According to the Post, the Italian military intelligence cooperated in the arrest after Berlusconi had given the green light. But the prime minister's spokesman "categorically denied" the story to the Milan newspaper Corriere della Sera. "Neither the prime minister's office nor any other Italian institution received advance warning, or even subsequent information, about the abduction," the spokesman said.
