WASHINGTON - The checkpoint in Baghdad where US soldiers killed an Italian intelligence agent and wounded a former hostage had been set up to secure the passage of US Ambassador to Iraq John Negroponte, CNN said Tuesday quoting an unnamed senior US official.
Friday's incident in which journalist Giuliana Sgrena was wounded and Italy's top intelligence officer in Iraq Nicola Calipari was killed has strained relations between the United States and Italy.
The incident is the object of a full-scale investigation by the US State Department.
The US military has said its forces gave ample warning to the driver of Sgrena's car, which they said was approaching at speed when they opened fire.
Sgrena has said they were not travelling fast and asserts that she was deliberately targeted for murder because the United States opposed negotiations with her kidnappers, a charge a State Department spokesman called "absurd."
Details about the checkpoint provided to CNN by a senior US official were disputed by Sgrena in an interview with the television news service.
"It was not a checkpoint. It was not a checkpoint, because a tank was not on the road," she told a CNN reporter through an interpreter in an interview. "It was parked on the side of he road. There was no indication that it was a checkpoint."
Asked whether she believed the US soldiers had deliberately shot at her car as it was driving to the airport, Sgrena said: "It is not up to me to say that it wasn't an ambush. It is up to those who did this action.
"They have to demonstrate that there were valid reasons to do what they did," she added.
The Washington Times daily Tuesday quoted an internal Pentagon memo saying that Italian security forces had failed to make arrangements for the safe passage of Sgrena.
"The journalist was driving in pitch-dark and at a high speed and failed, according to the first reports, to respond to numerous warnings," the memo said.
It added that there was "no indication that the Italian security forces made prior arrangements to facilitate the transition to the airport."
Italy's Foreign Minister Gianfranco Fini demanded Tuesday that the United States "identify and punish" those responsible for the shooting Calipari and dismissed Washington's view that a lack of communication was responsible for his death.
Calipari had made "all the necessary contacts" with US authorities in Baghdad, the foreign minister said.
03/08/2005 11:11 GMT