Issue of secret camps strains U.S.-EU relations
IHT: Rising European anger over contentions that the CIA has flown terror suspects to secret camps in Eastern Europe for interrogation and possible torture appears to have the potential to slow a warming of U.S.-European relations.
The issue also may weigh on trans-Atlantic intelligence cooperation - one area of joint endeavor that has largely survived the polarizing debate over the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
On Monday, the European Union's commissioner of justice and home affairs warned that any EU member found to have permitted the use of such a camp could lose its voting rights.
It was not immediately clear what weight the warning by the commissioner, Franco Frattini, might carry. No member's voting rights have ever been suspended.
The warning could also add to pressure on East European aspirants like Romania, which is set to accede to the EU in 2007, to demonstrate that they fully respect the Union's human rights standards.
Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council in Washington, acknowledged that the warning had "a potential impact" on U.S.-EU intelligence cooperation. He said the United States took the matter "very seriously."
The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, when asked about European complaints that the United States had been slow to provide information on the existence of any camps, said the administration would do its best "to reply in as forthright a manner as we possibly can."
In an interview with USA Today published Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice neither confirmed nor denied the existence of secret CIA prisons abroad.
She is expected to seek to ease growing European discomfort on a trip to Europe next week, and she defended the unlimited detention of terrorism suspects, saying it benefited the United States and the world.
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them, because if they commit the crime, thousands of innocent people die," she said.
Early this month, President George W. Bush responded to the latest allegations by saying repeatedly that "we do not torture." He did not address the question of secret camps.
The European Commission and several European governments are investigating the possibility of secret detention camps after a report in The Washington Post on Nov. 2.
The Post, citing unidentified U.S. and foreign officials, said the CIA had been hiding and interrogating Al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe. The report said the compound was a part of a covert CIA system set up since 2001 that at times had included sites in Thailand, Afghanistan and several East European democracies.
The Post said it had been asked not to identify the European countries, but Human Rights Watch later said it had information suggesting that Poland, a recent EU member, and Romania had secret prison sites. Read more
The issue also may weigh on trans-Atlantic intelligence cooperation - one area of joint endeavor that has largely survived the polarizing debate over the U.S.-led war in Iraq.
On Monday, the European Union's commissioner of justice and home affairs warned that any EU member found to have permitted the use of such a camp could lose its voting rights.
It was not immediately clear what weight the warning by the commissioner, Franco Frattini, might carry. No member's voting rights have ever been suspended.
The warning could also add to pressure on East European aspirants like Romania, which is set to accede to the EU in 2007, to demonstrate that they fully respect the Union's human rights standards.
Frederick Jones, a spokesman for the National Security Council in Washington, acknowledged that the warning had "a potential impact" on U.S.-EU intelligence cooperation. He said the United States took the matter "very seriously."
The State Department spokesman, Sean McCormack, when asked about European complaints that the United States had been slow to provide information on the existence of any camps, said the administration would do its best "to reply in as forthright a manner as we possibly can."
In an interview with USA Today published Tuesday, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice neither confirmed nor denied the existence of secret CIA prisons abroad.
She is expected to seek to ease growing European discomfort on a trip to Europe next week, and she defended the unlimited detention of terrorism suspects, saying it benefited the United States and the world.
"You can't allow somebody to commit the crime before you detain them, because if they commit the crime, thousands of innocent people die," she said.
Early this month, President George W. Bush responded to the latest allegations by saying repeatedly that "we do not torture." He did not address the question of secret camps.
The European Commission and several European governments are investigating the possibility of secret detention camps after a report in The Washington Post on Nov. 2.
The Post, citing unidentified U.S. and foreign officials, said the CIA had been hiding and interrogating Al Qaeda captives at a Soviet-era compound in Eastern Europe. The report said the compound was a part of a covert CIA system set up since 2001 that at times had included sites in Thailand, Afghanistan and several East European democracies.
The Post said it had been asked not to identify the European countries, but Human Rights Watch later said it had information suggesting that Poland, a recent EU member, and Romania had secret prison sites. Read more
posted by exoplanet at 6:51 PM
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