The Americans Are Setting Foot in Romania, As Our Grandparents Hoped For

The US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, is expected to arrive tomorrow in Bucharest. All Europe is holding its breath: would Rice make statements regarding the secret CIA interrogation locations on the continent? Or would she keep to the agenda and refer to the military bases in Eastern Europe only?

Mihai Razvan Ungureanu, the Romanian minister of foreign affairs, announced Rice’s visit yesterday in an emotional way. He said that the signing, tomorrow, of the political document which will allow US military bases to be based in Romania was the fulfillment of a collective whish, one that goes back to our grandparents, who waited for the Americans to liberate them from communism, after the end of WWII.

"This is a historic moment, since for the past 60 years our grandparents and parents dreamed of the Americans coming to Romania, and some paid with their freedom or lives for that dream," added Ungureanu.

The document to be signed by Rice and Ungureanu will open the way for small-sized, flexible US military bases to be settled in Romania.

Ungureanu said that it was not a must for him to ask Rice, during her three-hour visit to Romania, details on the CIA prison facilities that the Human Rights Watch sHRWt alleged were located in Romania too.

Ungureanu said that the US Administration will most likely address the issue of alleged CIA interrogation and prisons based in Europe, during Rice’s European tour, to answer a formal letter sent by Jack Straw, the UK foreign minister, on behalf of the European Union, of which Great Britain is a President of till the end of 2005.

Ungureanu reminded that Romania’s stance on the issue was repeatedly stated and stays the same: there were no such facilities on Romanian soil.

This time John Sifton, counterterrorism expert with the HRW, claims he has information from sources in the American government stating that suspects of terrorist activities might have been transported and detained in Romania for a brief period of time.

"It is quite likely that the Americans used the bases they had access to for such purposes, without the knowledge of the Romanian Government. It happened in Thailand, where such prisoners existed, and the Thai Government knew nothing about it," added Sifton for the Romanian public radio.

Rice was expected to make some statements on the topic at the airport, before leaving for Europe. The EU, the Council of Europe and all the nations which had been named in the past weeks as likely locations of the secret CIA operations wait for Rice’s clarifying statements.

The German magazine Der Spiegel stated it had a list of at least 437 secret flights of CIA operated planes in the German airspace. The list was provided by the German Aviation Security Services at a request from a German parliamentary group.

In all, some 300 planes on CIA missions landed in Europe, of which 96 in Germany, 80 in Great Britain, 15 in the Czech Republic, two in France, and one in Poland, said the British newspaper The Guardian, quoting information from the American Civil Aviation authorities.

The British media stated that documents they had access to suggest "complicities at the highest level possible for undergoing the secretive CIA operations" in Great Britain.