Croatia not told of US rendition flights- President

San Francisco, Apr 9: The United States, accused by Amnesty International of twice using Croatia as a stopover point for terrorism suspects, never informed the government about such landings.

''We wish to know why our territory is used, if it is used,'' Croatian President Stjepan Mesic told Reuters yesterday during a visit to San Francisco.

''A part of my constitutional powers is also the appointment of the heads of the intelligence services, so the government and myself have information about the work of the intelligence services,'' he said in an interview at his hotel.

''We have not received any information.'' In a report this week, Amnesty International said the United States twice used the airport near Dubrovnik, a popular tourist gateway to the Adriatic Coast, as a transfer point for terrorism suspects.

The Council of Europe and a European Parliament committee are both investigating reports that the CIA ran secret prisons for terrorist suspects in Eastern Europe.

The Amnesty report alleges the US ''rendition'' flights passed through airports in a wide variety of countries, including Germany, Italy, Romania, Spain and Britain.

''Renditions involve multiple layers of human rights violations,'' the report said.

''Most victims of rendition were arrested and detained illegally in the first place: some were abducted; others were denied access to any legal process, including the ability to challenge the decision to transfer them because of the risk of torture.'' The human rights organization quoted three men freed from jail in Yemen who said they had been held in a secret US prison in Eastern Europe.

Croatia has backed the US war on terrorism and has a small number of troops in Afghanistan.

Mesic, spending three days in San Francisco after a trip to South Korea, said it would be possible for an aircraft to deceive airport authorities about the passenger manifest.

''If any aircraft stops over for reasons that are not known to me such as technical reasons and stays for a while at an airport, we cannot know who the passengers are, or where they are bound for,'' said Mesic, who has been president since 2000.

Reuters