CIA 'covert flights' mar Rice's German visit

Damaging revelations about the scale of covert CIA flights allegedly used to transport Islamic terrorist suspects throughout Europe will overshadow a visit by US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to Germany on Tuesday for talks aimed at achieving a rapprochement between Washington and Berlin.

A potentially explosive report in Germany's Der Spiegel magazine disclosed yesterday that German air traffic controllers had handed Chancellor Angela Merkel's government a list of 437 flights suspected of being operated by the CIA in German air space.

The magazine said the CIA had used planes registered as private aircraft and that two alone accounted for 137 and 146 uses of airspace or landings in 2002 and 2003 at airfields in Berlin, Frankfurt and the American military airbase at Ramstein. "Such planes could be used to transfer presumed terrorists and place them in secret locations," Der Spiegel said.