Rice admits US ‘mistakes’ on terrorism

US SECRETARY of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday that Washington would work to rectify any mistakes it has made in its war on terror, and insisted that the Bush administration does not condone torture.

“When and if mistakes are made, we work very hard to try to correct them,” Ms Rice told a news conference with German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Ms Merkel said she and Ms Rice talked about the 2004 case of Khaled al-Masri, a Lebanese-born German national, who says he was seized in Macedonia and taken to a US prison in Afghanistan where he was tortured and interrogated about suspected ties to al-Qaida.

Mr al-Masri yesterday filed a lawsuit claiming he was arrested while attempting to enter Macedonia for a holiday, and held and tortured for five months by the CIA.

Ms Merkel said “the government of the US has, of course, accepted as a mistake” the al-Masri case and added that it had been referred to a secretive German parliamentary commission for investigation.

Ms Rice declined to comment directly, but when asked if she could “guarantee” that a German citizen had not, and will not be subject to the practice of rendition, she indicated a mistake had been made.

Yet Ms Rice defended the rendition programme, which has faced bitter criticism in Europe, saying the US has “saved American lives and we’ve saved European lives” with international intelligence efforts and pledged to continue with the work, with the assistance of its allies.

The meeting with Germany’s new chancellor came as Ms Rice opened a four-nation European trip amid swirling questions of whether the US keeps terrorist suspects in secret prisons that violate European legal and human rights guarantees.

Ms Merkel said Ms Rice’s assurances were “important” for her and for ordinary Germans to hear and said the meeting, the highest-ranking official contact between Berlin and Washington since Ms Merkel became chancellor last month, signalled a “good start” for future German-US relations.

She also welcomed Ms Rice’s pledge that US officials in Iraq are providing all the help they can to help secure the release of a German aid worker kidnapped there 11 days ago.

Dutch Foreign Minister Ben Bot dismissed Ms Rice’s response to questions about the CIA’s reported secret prisons as inadequate.

Ms Merkel made no direct criticism of the US and neither of them shed any light on whether the CIA had operated secret prisons in Europe or whether prisoners had been transported through Germany, as has recently been reported in US and international media.

Speaking later to Germany’s ARD television, Ms Rice reiterated that the US believed that terrorism “has to be fought lawfully.”

While terrorists knew no laws, “we don’t want to mimic them or become like them”, Ms Rice said. “There are military necessities, but we are going to be a country of laws ... that is something of which our partners can be assured.”

Later yesterday, Ms Rice flew to Romania, a country identified as a possible site of a secret detention facility run by the CIA. Romania denies it. She will sign a defence cooperation pact there related to an air base that Human Rights Watch has identified as a site for a clandestine prison.

European governments have expressed outrage over reports of a network of secret Soviet-era prisons in Eastern Europe where detainees may have been harshly treated as well as reports of CIA flights carrying al-Qaida prisoners through European airports.

Ms Rice’s trip to Germany, Romania, Ukraine and Belgium is meant to build on improved relations between Europe and the US after strains over Iraq.