Italy Replaces Intelligence Chief

In a file photo head of SISMI Italian Military intelligence Nicolo Pollari is shown in Rome, Sunday Aug. 6, 2006, at a hearing about the alleged CIA kidnapping of an Egyptian cleric in Milan . Pollari, who is under investigation in the alleged CIA abduction of an Egyptian cleric, was replaced on Monday, Nov. 20, 2006, Italian news reports said. (AP Photo/Alessandra Tarantino) (Alessandra Tarantino - AP)

ROME -- The government on Monday replaced the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, who was under investigation for the alleged CIA abduction of an Egyptian cleric and links to a fake dossier that purported to show Iraq tried to buy uranium ahead of the U.S.-led invasion.

In a major sweep, Nicolo Pollari was replaced as the head of the military intelligence agency SISMI, and the chiefs of the civilian secret service agencies were also removed. The leaders of the two other services were not named in the scandals, and the government insisted the changes were part of a broader overhaul of intelligence agencies.

"After a few years these positions of delicate responsibility must find their natural rotation," Premier Romano Prodi told the Apcom news agency.

"This had been waiting to happen for months," said Aldo Pigoli, an intelligence and international relations analyst in Milan. "In the past few months an agreement had formed that ... without too much noise there was a need for a replacement."

After he leaves SISMI, Pollari will receive "an important special assignment" reporting directly to Prodi, the premier's office said. The change takes effect Dec. 16.

Pollari had long resisted calls for his resignation.

In 2005, news reports in the leftist daily La Repubblica alleged he knowingly passed forged documents to the United States suggesting Saddam Hussein had been seeking uranium in Africa _ information used to bolster the case for the invasion of Iraq.

Pollari denied SISMI had any hand in disseminating the fake dossier, which detailed a fictitious Iraqi deal to buy 500 tons of yellowcake uranium from Niger.

Calls for his resignation intensified after he became the highest-ranking Italian official named in the investigation into a Muslim cleric's kidnapping, and was questioned by prosecutors in July.

Prosecutors in Milan recently renewed their request for Italy to ask Washington to extradite 26 Americans _ all but one believed to be CIA agents _ in the alleged 2003 abduction of Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.

He was supposedly snatched as he walked down a Milan street as part of a CIA "extraordinary rendition" program in which terrorism suspects are transferred to third countries, where some allegedly are tortured.

The cleric was reportedly flown out of northern Italy from a military base in Aviano, and, according to the prosecutors, eventually taken to Egypt, where he says he was tortured.