Posted on 02/28/2007 7:58:04 AM PST by SmithL
BRUSSELS, Belgium (AP) -- A senior U.S. administration official on Wednesday warned that ongoing inquiries into secret CIA activities in the European Union may undermine intelligence cooperation between the United States and European nations.
The European Parliament accused Britain, Poland, Italy and other nations in mid-February of colluding with the CIA to transport terror suspects to clandestine prisons in third countries.
In a report that concluded a yearlong investigation, the parliament identified 1,254 secret CIA flights that entered the European airspace since the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks on the United States.
It said that these flights were against international air traffic rules and suggested some of them may have carried terror suspects on board in violation of human rights principles.
John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, called the European Parliament report "unbalanced, inaccurate and unfair" and called on the EU governments to challenge the suggestion that Europeans need to be concerned about secret CIA flights.
"I can understand concerns about specific incidents but we should not somehow suggest that all intelligence activity is something illegal or suspicious," he said.
Germany, Italy and several other EU countries have been carrying out their own inquiries into secret CIA activities in Europe, probes Bellinger said "have not been helpful with respect to necessary cooperation between the United States and Europe."
"I do think these continuing investigations can harm intelligence cooperation, that's simply a fact of life," Bellinger told reporters after meeting legal advisers to EU governments in Brussels.
EU parliamentarians have rejected Bellinger's criticism and called on the United States to address concerns that some flights have carried kidnapped terror suspects.
(Excerpt) Read more at sfgate.com ...
Im so sick of the EU.You wont get our intel officers or military personel,ever. Come take them we dare you.
Silvio Berlusconi, the Italian prime minister, on Friday told the US to respect Italian sovereignty, as a diplomatic row with the US over an alleged CIA operation inside Italy escalated.
Last week, an Italian magistrate issued arrest warrants for 13 Central Intelligence Agency operatives for allegedly kidnapping Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, an Egyptian cleric, in connection with an anti-terrorism investigation.
That first quote was only an excerpt, BTW. The rest is behind the link.
The west is so polly annish. It will be our doom.
Ditto, Old Europe hasn't figured out who the enemy is.
The Left has, and its us.
Our position should be that those agents don't exist, they were never in Italy, the kidnapping never occurred.
There is a reason they call it "espionage".
"U.S. to Refuse Extradition of CIA Agents"
Well Duh. Can't believe they even asked.
I hope these Euros, who are spying on our spies, don't call themselves our allies. Because they certainly are not. They're the allies of worldwide marxist agenda.
If you are going to kidnap their citizens as terrorists and hold them incommunicato, you should work with their own intel agencies.
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