U.S. Said to Admit German's Abduction Was an Error

After meeting with Rice, German Chancellor Angela Merkel said U.S. admitted a German was "erroneously taken." Rice aides said she admitted no error. (By Arnd Wiegmann -- Reuters)

On Nov. 2, The Post reported that the CIA had been hiding and interrogating some of its most important al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe, part of a covert prison system that at various times has included sites in eight countries, including Thailand, Afghanistan and several East European democracies.

The Post did not identify those countries at the request of senior U.S. officials, who said the disclosure could disrupt counterterrorism efforts there and elsewhere and make those countries targets of retaliation.

In an effort to calm tensions triggered by the disclosure, Rice began her trip Monday by reading a detailed statement designed to allay concerns in Europe over CIA practices in the war on terrorism. She neither confirmed nor denied the existence of the clandestine prison system. But she said the CIA's interrogations helped prevent terrorist attacks, and she strongly suggested that the questioning took place with the cooperation of European governments.

U.S. aides hope that Rice's forceful rebuttal will turn the tables on the criticism by forcing the European public to consider the potentially deadly consequences if their governments fail to combat terrorism.

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot told his country's lower house of parliament Tuesday that the U.S. statement was unsatisfactory. He said he expected a "lively discussion with Rice and foreign ministers of NATO member states" when they meet on Thursday in Brussels, the Dutch news agency ANP said.

Friso Roscam Abbing, spokesman for the European Union's justice commissioner, Franco Frattini, said, "We welcome Dr. Rice's strong commitment to fully respecting the rule of law and her zero tolerance for torture." But, he added, "I certainly would not say that we're back to business as usual."

Daniel Keohane, a research fellow at the Center for European Reform in London, said Rice "seems to be implying that Europeans were well aware of who's going where in their airspace and in their territory."

He suggested that European governments "probably would prefer to brush this under the carpet."

The agreement with Romania to permit the stationing of U.S. troops marks a significant advance in the Pentagon's effort to scale down large military bases in Germany, designed to counter Cold War-era land invasions, and create smaller ones in Eastern Europe for leaner, more flexible units attuned to small-scale wars and counterterrorism. Under the agreement that Rice signed Tuesday, the U.S. force at Mihael Kogalniceanu air base on the Black Sea will remain relatively small and troops will frequently rotate out of the country.

Human Rights Watch has cited flight records of aircraft allegedly linked to the CIA to suggest that facilities in Poland and Romania were used as CIA detention centers and has named the Kogalniceanu base as one of four possible Romanian sites. Both countries have denied they hosted such prisons, and intelligence officials have said many of the flights likely carried CIA officials and were probably not transporting terror suspects.

At the news conference, Romania's president, Traian Basescu, angrily denounced the "speculation about the landing of certain airplanes" and invited any international organization to inspect "any part of Romania, any military base" to settle the controversy.

Correspondent John Ward Anderson in Paris and staff writer Josh White in Washington contributed to this report.