The White House has rejected an Italian journalist's suggestion that she was targeted by US troops in Iraq in a shooting in which she was wounded and an Italian agent was killed.
"I think it's absurd to make any such suggestion that our men and women in uniform deliberately targeted innocent civilians. That's just absurd," said White House spokesman Scott McClellan.
The hostage whose life Nicola Calipari saved, Giuliana Sgrena, said it was possible they were targeted deliberately because the US opposes Italy's policy of negotiating with kidnappers, and she promised Mr Calipari 's widow to find out why they were attacked.
Hundreds of people packed a Rome church today to pay their last respects to the Italian intelligence officer. The state funeral of Mr Calipari in the Santa Maria degli Angeli Church was attended by President Carlo Azeglio Ciampi and other top officials including US Ambassador Mel Sembler .
An honour guard slowly carried the casket draped with an Italian flag into the church, where mourners who jammed the pews stood to applaud.
The funeral came after Mr Calipari 's body lay in state at Rome's Vittoriano monument, with tens of thousands of people streaming past the flag-draped coffin since the body was returned from Iraq on Saturday night.
The hostage whose life Mr Calipari saved said it was possible they were targeted deliberately because the US opposes Italy's policy of negotiating with kidnappers, and she promised Mr Calipari 's widow to find out why they were attacked.
Ms Sgrena, who was abducted in Baghdad on February 4th, was recovering in a Rome hospital from a shrapnel wound to the shoulder and was not expected to attend the funeral.
Ms Sgrena said Mr Calipari died shielding her. She offered no evidence to support her claim that the attack was deliberate, and in an interview in an Italian newspaper today she said she doesn't know what led to the attack.
"I believe, but it's only a hypothesis, that the happy ending to the negotiations must have been irksome," she said. "The Americans are against this type of operation. For them, war is war, human life doesn't count for much."