Pressure on Portugal's government over CIA flights

LISBON, Jan 24 (Reuters) Portugal today condemned ''misinformation'' about its alleged role in secret CIA flights carrying terrorist suspects as pressure on the Socialist government rose following a European Parliament report.

The European Parliament approved a draft report yesterday alleging that many European countries knew about CIA flights.

Ana Gomes, a Portuguese member of the European Parliament committee, said there was increasing evidence that a number of illegal rendition suspects had been transferred to the U S base of Guantanamo with stopovers at Portuguese airports.

''It is essential that all misinformation on this topic is contested as it questions the confidence and credibility that Portuguese democratic institutions merit,'' the Foreign Ministry said in an unusually strongly worded statement.

Gomes pointed to statements made by Foreign Minister Luis Amado who said flights to Guantanamo were ''normal'' as it is a military base of a NATO partner. The statement was included in a letter by Amado to the committee in December.

''I don't think any other European minister has said that flights to Guantanamo were normal,'' Gomes told Reuters. ''I think it is absolutely extraordinary.'' The flights included that of Canadian Adburahman Khadr, who is alleged to have been flown from Guantanamo via the U S air base on Portugal's Azores islands in the Atlantic Ocean. There are also suspicions that six Algerian-born men seized in Bosnia in 2002 were flown through Portugal, Gomes said.

The draft approved by the European Parliament said it regretted that ''Portuguese authorities were unable or reluctant to answer all questions'' raised by the committee. Two former defence ministers declined to talk to the committee last year.

Gomes has planned to meet Portugal's chief public prosecutor on Friday, where she will urge him to open an investigation into allegations surrounding the CIA flights.

German, Italian and Swiss prosecutors have launched probes into similar allegations in their countries.

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