EU's Barroso unaware of secret CIA flights

BRUSSELS, Sep 18 (Reuters) European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso did not authorise and was not even aware of any secret CIA flights through Portugal when he was prime minister, his spokesman said today.

Barroso's spokesman was responding to questions from journalists about reports that a European parliamentary committee investigating a secret CIA programme known as ''rendition'' may consider asking Barroso to appear before it.

The reports appear just three months after a European human rights watchdog accused Portugal of allowing the CIA flights to stop over for refuelling and amid a number of probes into accusations that the CIA flew terrorism suspects across Europe to secret prisons for torture.

''During his term of office as prime minister of Portugal he has never authorised CIA rendition flights or any other measure that would be in contradiction with Portuguese law,'' spokesman Johannes Laitenberger told a news briefing.

Barroso resigned in July 2004 halfway through his four-year term as Portugal's prime minister to become head of the European Commission. He hosted a summit of leaders of the United States, Britain and Spain - all supporters of the Iraq war - in the Azores immediately before the US-led invasion of Iraq in 2003.

''At no point has information on such flights been brought to his attention,'' Laitenberger said.

Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera reported that Claudio Fava, the EU lawmaker charged with drafting the committee's report, has said Barroso should appear. Fava's assistant told Reuters that Fava would ask other committee members to invite Barroso to appear, but that no decision had been taken yet.

Most lawmakers from the committee have already agreed to visit Azores as part of investigations, Fava's assistant said.

An investigator for Europe's human rights watchdog, the Council of Europe, said in June that Portugal had been a refuelling stop for flights involving the unlawful transfer of detainees.

Barroso's spokesman said Barroso could not testify in front of the European Parliament's probe committee in his role as President of the European Commission, adding that no request had been made yet to invite him as a former prime minister.

''It is for the Portuguese authorities, not the (European) Commission to provide any information or clarification that may be necessary,'' he said.

The European Union has condemned the detention of terrorism suspects by the United States in secret overseas prisons, whose existence US President George Bush acknowledged last week.

A Washington Post report last year, which said that the CIA had run secret prisons in Europe and flown suspects to states where they could be tortured, unleashed a spate of probes prompting uncomfortable denials by European governments.

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