Salon.com News | U.S., Italy to discuss CIA kidnapping case: "Premier Silvio Berlusconi said Friday the U.S. ambassador expressed Washington's ''full and total' respect for Italian sovereignty at a meeting about the kidnapping of a radical Egyptian cleric that has resulted in an arrest warrant for 13 purported CIA operatives.

Ambassador Mel Sembler spent about an hour in Berlusconi's office after having been summoned there a day earlier. Afterward, Berlusconi issued a statement saying he had expressed the ''indispensable need' for the United States to ''fully respect Italian sovereignty.'"

...

"On Thursday, Cabinet minister Carlo Giovanardi denied in parliament that Italian officials had any prior knowledge of the Feb. 17, 2003, kidnapping of the cleric in Milan. The Italian arrest warrant for the 13 CIA operatives says the cleric was sent to Egypt and tortured.

The Egyptian purportedly was seized as part of a CIA's practice known as ''rendition," in which suspected terrorists are transferred without court approval to third countries, where they face interrogation and possible torture.

The incident has strained relations between the two allies, already tested by the shooting death of an Italian agent by U.S. troops in Baghdad in March."

(Via Salon.)