Rice confronts worries over CIA prisons

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice (L) address a press conference following talks at the chancellery in Berlin yesterday.. PHOTO: AFP

Before Rice arrived in Berlin on Monday, a government spokesman said Germany will ask Rice about a government list of more than 400 flights and landings in Germany by planes suspected of being used by the CIA.

Later Tuesday, Rice was flying to Romania, a country identified as a likely site of a secret detention facility run by the CIA. Romania denies it. She will sign a defence cooperation pact related to an air base the advocacy group Human Rights Watch has identified as a probable site for a clandestine prison.

In Berlin, Rice was to see new German Chancellor Angela Merkel, the country's first leader from the formerly communist East. Merkel pledged last week to put aside past differences between Germany and the United States even as she pressed for the Bush administration to take the CIA prison concerns seriously.

"Let the battles of the past lie those battles have been fought," Merkel said in her first speech to parliament as chancellor.

The United States is eager to get off on the right foot with Merkel after turbulent relations with the government of blunt Bush opponent Gerhard Schroeder.

Rice met in Washington last week with new German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier and promised him an answer on the prison issue.