Italy Demands Us Explanation Over Kidnapped Cleric

Italy's relations with the US took a further blow yesterday when Silvio Berlusconi's conservative government said it was summoning the American ambassador in Rome to explain the disappearance of a radical Muslim cleric, who was snatched from a Milan street two years ago.

Links between the traditionally close allies had already been strained by the shooting in March of an Italian intelligence officer by American troops in Iraq.

Last Friday, a judge in Milan ordered the arrest of 13 Americans - purported to be CIA agents - on charges of kidnapping. She was responding to a request from prosecutors who found evidence that the cleric, Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was sent via two American military bases to his native Egypt for imprisonment and interrogation.

Mr Nasr was subsequently released temporarily. In telephone calls intercepted by the Italian police, the cleric said he had almost died under torture.

Carlo Giovanardi, Mr Berlusconi's minister for relations with parliament, categorically denied that the government had been told in advance by Washington of a plan to seize Mr Nasr.

In statements to both houses of the Italian legislature, he said the reported operation was "never brought to the attention of the government of the republic or national institutions", a term that appeared to include Italy's intelligence agencies.

Mr Giovanardi added that this meant it was "not even possible" that Italy had given permission for an operation.

The minister said a report from the US that claimed that the CIA had briefed and sought approval from Italian intelligence was "false and without any foundation".

The Washington Post quoted former and current CIA officials as saying that the agency and the Italian service had agreed that if the operation became public, neither side would confirm its involvement.

This was "a standard agreement the CIA makes with foreign intelligence services over covert operations".

Several opposition MPs expressed scepticism over the government's denial, but urged it to follow through with vigorous action in defence of Italian sovereignty and national dignity. Marco Minniti, of the Democratic Left, the biggest opposition party, said: "We say 'yes' to being friends of the United States. But with heads held high."

Italian investigators have stressed that Mr Nasr, the alleged leader in Italy of a component group of al-Qaida, was considered a highly dangerous suspect. But they insist that he should have been pursued by legal and constitutional means.

He disappeared one month before the US-led invasion of Iraq in March 2003. The US magazine Newsweek yesterday suggested that the two events may have been connected.

Court documents show that Italian prosecutors had linked the cleric with a group based in the Kurdish region of northern Iraq whose ties to al-Qaida were invoked by the Bush administration as evidence of a connection between Saddam Hussein and global Islamism.

The report quoted former CIA officials as saying that the agency may have needed information on the group either to bolster the case for an invasion, or because it suspected that the group would attack US forces once they entered Iraq.