Germany, Ireland and Switzerland joined a chorus of nearly a dozen European countries that are probing US spy agency flights for prisoners reportedly subjected to extra-judicial detention and possibly torture.
Irish Foreign Minister Dermot Ahern will seek assurances from the administration in Washington that US planes using Shannon airport have not been carrying CIA terror suspects when he meets with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice on Thursday.
"The Minister will seek assurances from Condoleezza Rice that Shannon was not used for the rendition of prisoners or anything of that nature," a spokesman for Mr Ahern said.
Shannon airport, in the southwest of Ireland, was cited in media reports as one of the European airports used by the CIA for the transit of terror suspects.
Rice questioned
New German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, due in Washington on Tuesday, said he was troubled by the reports but would reserve judgment until Washington offered its take on the accounts.
"What we have read is in fact grounds for concern," Mr Steinmeier said in an interview with the weekly Bild am Sonntag.
German officials from across the political spectrum urged Mr Steinmeier to take up the issue in talks with Condoleezza Rice and the White House national security adviser, Stephen Hadley, in Washington.
Mr Steinmeier welcomed a request for information from the US administration made last week by his British counterpart Jack Straw.
Germany has already opened an investigation into a case in which an
Egyptian suspect was reportedly secretly transported via Ramstein in western Germany, the largest US air base in Europe.
Public broadcaster ZDF and several newspapers have reported that more than 80 secret Central Intelligence Agency flights touched down in Germany en route to secret detention centers.
ARD, another public television channel, said that at least one German security agency had been aware of CIA detainee transports via Germany.
The government coordinator for transatlantic relations, Karsten Voigt, told the Handelsblatt business daily that Germany must not violate its own justice system in the fight against terror.
"We must ensure that we do not give up our own values and the principles of the rule of law in combatting criminal terrorists," he said in an interview to be published Monday.
Swiss demand answers
Meanwhile Switzerland has asked the United States to explain 27 overflights by American planes in 2003 and 2004, the foreign ministry in Bern said.
"Switzerland addressed its concern to the American State Department in mid-November," said Carine Carey, a ministry spokeswoman, confirming a report in the SonntagsZeitung newspaper.
The Swiss government wants to know if detainees were transported on those flights and three other stopovers at the airport in Geneva, said Ms Carey, adding that the ministry had not yet received a response from Washington.
Daniel Goering, a spokesman for the Swiss federal civil aviation office told AFP that two US planes of "a specific registration" had flown over Switzerland 27 times.
He said that one of the planes on a flight from Geneva to Washington flew over Switzerland 18 times and made two landings at Geneva, while the other plane, on a flight from Prague to Washington with a stopover in Geneva, flew over Switzerland nine times.
A number of European countries have opened inquiries into alleged CIA plane landings, including Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden, as well as Morocco.
The Council of Europe opened a probe last week, but top investigator Dick Marty of Switzerland conceded Saturday that he had "practically no methods of constraint" to stop the flights to change CIA methods.
The Washington Post reported this month that the CIA was holding suspects from Osama bin Laden's Al-Qaeda group in prisons in eight countries including Thailand, Afghanistan and "several democracies in eastern Europe."
US-based independent watchdog Human Rights Watch said later it was "practically convinced" that such centers existed, at least in Poland and Romania.