The US stood firm yesterday in the controversy over secret CIA prisons in Europe, challenging allies to make "hard choices" to fight terrorism and maintaining that intelligence gathered by the CIA has saved European as well as US lives.
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, leaving on a European tour, made no mention of the reported prisons but vigorously defended moving terror suspects around or interrogation and denied using torture "under any circumstances."
"It is up to those governments and their citizens to decide if they wish to work with us to prevent terrorist attacks against their own country or other countries, and decide how much sensitive information they can make public," Rice said.
"So now, before the next attack, we should all consider the hard choices that democratic governments must face," she said in a statement read at Andrews Air Force base near Washington.
Information gathered by US intelligence agencies from a ``very small number of extremely dangerous detainees,'' the secretary said, has helped prevent terrorist attacks and saved lives ``in Europe as well as in the United States and other countries.''
Offensive posture
According to the Washington Post, Rice's posture on the trip to Berlin, Bucharest, Kiev and Brussels for a NATO meeting, will be a firm, offensive one.
"After weeks of being pummeled in the European media over reports about clandestine prisoner transfers and secret detention centers, administration officials have concluded that they need to put European governments on notice that they should back off and begin to emphasize the benefits of intelligence cooperation to their citizens," the paper reported on Saturday.
"Administration officials have been careful to neither confirm nor deny the existence of the prison system, first disclosed by the Washington Post on Nov. 2, and Rice has no plans to acknowledge it," the paper said.
The paper said that while her position, being drawn up by administration officials, had not been released yet, "`the key point will be `We're all in this together and you need to look at yourselves as much as us,'" one official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.
The EU this week sent Washington a request for clarification on the reports of the prisons and transport flights in Europe that some media have suggested might violate international laws.
Illegal flights
Meanwhile, a report by US legal experts said that the British government is guilty of breaking international law if it allowed secret CIA "rendition" flights of terror suspects to land at UK airports.
Merely giving permission for the flights to refuel while en route to the Middle East to collect a prisoner would constitute a legal breach, according to the opinion commissioned by an all-party group of British members of parliament, which met in the Westminster parliament for the first time yesterday.
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