BERLIN, 4 December 2005 — US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice arrives in Germany tomorrow to start a four-country tour expected to be dogged by questions about reports of secret CIA prison camps and “torture flights”.
Rice has promised to provide responses to European countries increasingly concerned that airports on their soil have been used for flights allegedly carrying undeclared detainees in the US-led “war on terror”.
The German government said on Friday that it was expecting an explanation from Rice, but not while she is in Berlin for talks with Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday.
“We are not putting the US government under pressure of time,” government spokesman Thomas Steg said. “It does not matter whether it (an explanation) comes on Tuesday or later.” The United States this week acknowledged the European concerns, calling them “legitimate questions” that deserved a response.
Germany is home to the largest US airbase in Europe, Ramstein, and press reports have said that as many as 80 flights which were possibly carrying terror suspects landed or took off from airports in the country. Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has adopted a cautious approach to the reports, saying he can only deal in facts, not speculation. Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern said on Thursday that he believed Rice would make a statement on the secret prison claims during her European visit. The European Union has threatened sanctions against any of its member states found to have been operating the secret prisons, or allowing their territory to be used for the transport of the phantom detainees. The claims have emerged since early November, when the Washington Post newspaper reported that “black site” prisons were, or had been, set up in eight countries including Thailand, Afghanistan and “several democracies in Eastern Europe” since the Sept. 11 attacks on the United States.
A host of European countries are examining reports of the flights.
Reports have detailed suspect flights landing in or flying over Britain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland.
France became the latest country drawn into the controversy when Le Figaro newspaper reported on Friday that aircraft hired by the CIA, possibly to transport Islamist prisoners, had made at least two stopovers in the country, in 2002 and 2005.
The flights controversy is threatening to overshadow Rice’s first meeting with Merkel since the latter became chancellor.
Rice last visited Berlin in February on her inaugural trip as chief US diplomat to prepare the ground for a visit by President George W. Bush, which largely failed to thaw the frosty ties between the two countries.
Former chancellor Gerhard Schroeder enraged Washington with his opposition to the war in Iraq. While Merkel has ruled out sending German troops to Iraq, she has made improving transatlantic relations a priority.
Rice will go on from Berlin to visit Romania, Ukraine and Brussels, for a NATO meeting.
