EU-US clash over CIA camps averted
European foreign ministers on Thursday refrained from confrontation with the US, welcoming secretary of state Condoleezza Rice's explanations about alleged secret CIA prisons and clandestine prisoner transportation in and out of Europe.
Ms Rice was meeting with the foreign ministers of its NATO allies in Brussels on Thursday (8 December) to discuss expanding the 26-nation military alliance's presence in Afghanistan.
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However, uncomfortable questions about alleged CIA secret prisons on EU soil and the use of torture on detained prisoners continued to rain as her European tour entered its third day.
In Brussels, Ms Rice repeated statements she made in Ukraine on Wednesday that cruel and degrading interrogation methods are banned for US personnel, both at home and abroad.
She added "at no time did the United States agree to inhumane acts or torture"
"[The US] have always respected the sovereignty of the states concerned and even if terrorists are not covered by the Geneva Conventions, they have still applied the principles governing those Geneva Conventions."
Ministers satisfied with Rice explanations
Officials at the meeting said that reactions from participating European ministers, who until now had seemed to be biding their time for a heads-on confrontation with the US over the allegations, had been reconciliatory, according to press reports.
"I think NATO and EU ministers were able to raise their concerns that we should not diverge from one another on the interpretation of international law", German foreign minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier told a press conference in Brussels.
"Secretary Rice promised that international agreements are not interpreted any differently in the United States than they are in Europe. That, at least, is a good statement", Mr Steinmeier added.
Dutch foreign minister Bernard Bot, who in the beginning of this week said that the US had "not been able to give a satisfactory answer" to European concerns over CIA operations, on Thursday indicated that he was "very satisfied" with her responses, Reuters reports.
The Belgian foreign minister Karel de Gucht told Belgian radio after the meeting that she had the impression that all ministers generally welcomed Ms Rice's explanations.
400 or more CIA flights
EU member states have persistently denied knowledge of secret CIA activities on their soils or at their airports, although reports have not stopped coming in about CIA operations in Europe since the allegations were broken by NGO Human Rights Watch and the Washington Post newspaper last month.
The Guardian says that there have been 300 flights in total. But German magazine Spiegel puts this figure even higher, at 437 flights, which it says may have been implicated in the practice of "extra-legal rendition" - the seizure of terror suspects.
Amnesty International has made claims based on logbooks that the CIA made 800 flights over Europe in the 2001-2005 period.
The American TV station ABC announced at the beginning of this week that the US governments maintained secret prison camps in Romania and Poland until late last month, and closed them only when the allegations hit the press.
Romania and Poland deny any knowledge of US prison camps on their soil, despite allegations that they have hosted them.
Ms Rice said ahead of a meeting in Berlin on Tuesday, that the US "respects the sovereignty of all countries", a remark interpreted by some media as a signal that any EU prison camps were approved by the host countries.