Rice turns tables on EU torture critics

SECRETARY of State Condoleezza Rice turned the tables on European critics of tough US tactics in the war on terror yesterday, maintaining that intelligence gathered by the CIA has saved European as well as American lives.

Responding for the first time in detail to the outcry over reports of secret CIA-run prisons in European democracies, Ms Rice said the United States “will use every lawful weapon to defeat these terrorists.” However, in remarks delivered as she got ready to leave on a trip to Europe, she steadfastly refused to answer the underlying question of whether the United States had CIA-operated secret prisons there.

“We cannot discuss information that would compromise the success of intelligence, law enforcement, and military operations. We expect other nations share this view,” Ms Rice said in a statement at suburban Andrews Air Force Base, Maryland.

President George W Bush has denied that the United States engages in torture in the war against terrorists, but Rice’s statements yesterday represented the most detailed public comment the administration has yet offered on this vexing issue.

Information gathered by US intelligence agencies from a “very small number of extremely dangerous detainees,” the secretary said, and has helped prevent terrorist attacks and saved lives “in Europe as well as in the United States and other countries”.

Reports of the existence of the secret prisons have caused a transatlantic uproar. The European Union has asked the Bush administration about these reports.

By suggesting whatever the United States did had the co-operation of European nations, Ms Rice may have imposed pressure on their governments to explain to their people whether they violated national or international laws.

And that could make Ms Rice’s stops in Europe even more difficult.

“It is up to those governments and their citizens to decide if they wish to work with us,” she said, “and decide how much sensitive information they can make public.”

Britain, which holds the revolving presidency of the EU, sent a two-paragraph letter to Washington late last month demanding more information about reports that the CIA detained and interrogated terrorism prisoners in Soviet-era compounds in Eastern Europe.

In Germany, her first stop, a government spokesman, Ulrich Wilhelm, said his government had a list of more than 400 overflights and landings by planes suspected of being used by the CIA. He told reporters “we are hoping that all of the facts will be discussed” by Ms Rice with Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Ms Rice said the United States does not permit or tolerate torture under any circumstances.

Human rights organisations and legal groups, both in the US and abroad, have accused the US of allowing a practice known as “rendition to torture,” in which suspects are taken to countries such as Egypt and Saudi Arabia where harsh interrogation methods are used.

Ms Rice said the United States has long participated in the movement of terror suspects between countries.