GERMANY: Allegations of CIA flights used to transport terrorism suspects to secret prisons for torture cast a shadow over yesterday's meeting in Berlin between German chancellor Angela Merkel and US secretary of state Condoleezza Rice.
The new German leader met Dr Rice for talks intended to improve relations strained over the Iraq war.
Dr Merkel said democratic values were the "highest good" to be protected from the threat of terrorism, and promised an "intensified relationship" with Washington.
"We always have to strike a balance between a determined battle against those who threaten the values of freedom and the choice of means that obey and comply with our democratic principles," said Dr Merkel after the 50-minute meeting.
"That means that we have to adhere to the democratic rules on the one hand, but know on the other hand that our secret services have to be able to do their work."
At the start of a European tour, Dr Rice said the US did not condone torture and it was against US and international law for it to be involved in torture or conspiracy to commit torture.
"We act within our obligations," she said. "But we have an obligation to defend our people and we will use every lawful means to do so."
The matter is particularly controversial in Germany because of the case of Khaled el-Masri, a Lebanese-born man with German citizenship taken from a bus on the Serbian-Macedonian border on December 31st, 2003, and allegedly tortured at a secret CIA prison in Afghanistan for five months.
Mr Masri was a victim of mistaken identity - his name was similar to an associate of one of the September 11th hijackers - and when the CIA realised this he was flown back and left on a country road in Albania, five months after his abduction.
The former German government claimed it knew nothing of the case until contacted by Mr Masri's lawyer in June 2004, but a US newspaper report at the weekend suggested they were informed by US officials of the case the previous month.
Dr Merkel told journalists that the case, which is to be investigated by a German secret service watchdog, was "naturally" accepted by the government of the United States as a mistake.
However, Dr Rice declined to comment on the case before journalists, saying: "Any policy will sometimes make mistakes, and it is our promise to partners that we will do everything we can to rectify those mistakes."
When questioned by journalists, Dr Merkel declined to say whether she agreed with the US definition of torture, a controversial matter since a leaked US Justice Department memo from 2002 argued that torture could be narrowed down to "pain accompanying serious physical injury, such as organ failure, impairment of bodily function, or even death".
"It's not just a question of domestic American law but the international convention against torture," said Dr Merkel. "If doubts arise we know that our partners work in relation to the law and their international commitments."
The allegations about secret prisons where suspects are interrogated outside international law dogged Dr Rice as she headed yesterday afternoon to Romania, a country human rights groups suspect is a location for such a prison.