Rice Meets German Chancellor Amid Cia Row

Condoleezza Rice met the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, today amid an international row over whether the CIA has used secret flights to transport prisoners around Europe.

The US secretary of state said the US would use "every lawful means" to combat terrorism and reiterated that Washington is not involved in, and does not condone, torture.

But Ms Rice made no comment about the alleged flights. It emerged in Germany at the weekend that CIA aircrafts had landed in the country on 437 occasions.

After talks with Ms Rice, Ms Merkel said the meeting was a "good start" for future relations between Germany and the US. She said the pair had discussed the CIA flights and agreed that intelligence must be balanced with legal rules.

Ms Rice agreed that "good intelligence" was needed to protect people worldwide from terror and added that the US "respects the sovereignty of our partners" in the war on terrorism.

Before she left for her European visit on Monday, Ms Rice defended the US policy of rendition - the practice of flying terror suspects abroad for interrogation outside US law, saying it had been used for decades.

She added that US intelligence operations had saved lives in Europe and had been conducted with the cooperation of European governments.

But she refused to confirm or deny the existence of CIA-run secret prisons in eastern Europe.

"Were I to confirm or deny, say yes or say no, then I would be compromising intelligence information, and I'm not going to do that," Ms Rice told reporters on her plane to Germany.

At the press conference today, Ms Rice said the US had an obligation to protect its citizens, but it would do so within legal limits.

"The president has made it very clear that US personnel will operate within US law and within our international obligations," she said.

"We have an obligation to defend our people and we will use every lawful means to do so."

Ms Rice is also due to visit Romania, a country identified by Human Rights Watch as a likely site of a secret, US-run interrogation site.