MEPs want co-operation on CIA activities

Date: 15/06/06

Members of the European Parliament are appealing to EU governments to co-operate with their investigation into alleged CIA activity in Europe during the next phase of their work.

The Parliamentary committee charged with conducting the inquiry voted this week to accept, albeit with some amendments, an interim report into alleged CIA activity including 'rendition' flights of terrorist suspects. The report will next month go before the entire Parliament and the committee will also seek approval for extending its mandate for a further six months.

The next phase will see the committee cross-examine member states and their intelligence agencies on their knowledge of CIA operations in the EU. So far not all governments have responded positively. Carlos Coelho, the committee chairman, criticised the head of the Spanish secret service saying it had "slammed the door in our face" after ignoring requests to meet the committee.

Italian Socialist MEP Claudio Fava, who wrote the interim report, said both current and out-going governments, for example in Italy, would be asked to co-operate with the next phase of the committee work.

There were mixed views on the final version of the interim report, which saw 25 votes in favour, 14 against and seven abstentions. Cem ...zdemir, German Green MEP and vice-chairman of the committee, said the report had resulted in a better knowledge of the illegal activity especially after interviewing people who say they were abducted in Europe, flown elsewhere and detained. "Comparing where we stand and where we are now to what we knew before, after talking to people we are in a better position," he said.

But Irish centre-right MEP Simon Coveney, who saw only one of his four amendments to the report accepted, said he was not happy with the deductions made in it.

"I feel it needs to be credible and backed up by evidence. It's an interim report and it shouldn't be jumping to conclusions," he said.

He added: "It's important that we're credible because there's no point in bashing the US for the sake of it."

Coveney's political group, the EPP-ED, split their vote on the report with half their members voting for it and half abstaining. The group's leader Hans-Gert Pöttering explained that this was to show "how we are against it, in that it is not objective" but also to show "we are ready for discussion which we will try between now and next month [at the parliament's plenary]".

Article reports on the activities of the European Parliament's Temporary Committee of inquiry into alleged CIA activities in Europe. The Committee voted on 12 june 2006 to accept, albeit with some amendments, an interim report into among other things the CIA's 'extraordinary rendition' flights of terrorist suspects.

• Primary Source

European Parliament: Temporary committee of inquiry: Alleged use of European countries by the CIA for the transportation and illegal detention of prisoners (TDIP) http://europarl.europa.eu/activities/expert/committees/presentation.do?committee=2073&language=EN

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