ROME - Italy on Monday angrily reiterated it had no prior knowledge of the CIA's abduction of a Muslim cleric in Milan in 2003, rejecting assertions by a former CIA agent in a newspaper interview that Italy's secret service chief had personally consented to the operation.
The allegations stoked fresh outrage in Italy as US Ambassador Mel Sembler hosted his annual July 4 garden party marking US Independence Day which is normally attended by Italian ministers and diplomats.
A statement from Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi's office denied "in the most absolute and categoric manner" that either the government, or the director of the SISMI intelligence services "received any kind of information from the US authorities" about the abduction of Egyptian citizen Osama Mustafa Hassan.
The statement followed an article in the left-leaning La Repubblica quoting a former CIA agent, Michael Scheuer, as saying that SISMI chief General Nicolo Pollari had personally given his consent to the street abduction by a US secret service unit.
Scheuer, a 20-year veteran of the CIA who left the agency last year, told La Repubblica that then CIA station chief in Rome Jeffrey Castelli had sought and received approval from the SISMI chief.
But Berlusconi's office, which does not normally respond to newspaper stories, issued a swift and cutting denial.
"There was no contact, no conversation, no sharing of information relating to the Milan episode, for which no authorisation was ever requested or granted, nor was there ever any mention of it in contacts between the Italian and American presidencies," the statement said.
The case has tarnished relations between Washington and Rome, a staunch US ally which has a large troop contingent helping the Americans try to restore order in post-Saddam Iraq.
But Sembler said in a speech marking Independence Day that relations between the two countries had never been as strong and would continue to prosper.
Berlusconi called in the US ambassador last Friday to explain Washington's involvement and later issued a statement in which he said he had demanded "full respect for Italian sovereignty from the United States."
Italy has issued arrest warrants for the 13 CIA agents allegedly involved in the operation, in which Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, was snatched from the street and flown from a US military base in northern Italy to Egypt, where his supporters say he was tortured.
Hassan's lawyer has said he is being held without charge in an Egyptian prison 100 kilometres (60 miles) north of the capital Cairo.
The case threw a spotlight on the US policy of "extraordinary renditions" in which suspected terrorists are transferred without court approval to third countries for questioning.
The cleric -- who was under investigation in Italy as part of an inquiry into international terrorism -- was the imam of a Milan mosque which has been under close surveillance since the September 11, 2001 attacks in the United States.
The La Repubblica interview with Scheuer follows a report by The Washington Post last week quoting an unnamed CIA veteran as saying the agency "told a number of people" in the Italian secret service about its kidnapping plan, but "certainly not the magistrate, nor the Milan police."
07/04/2005 18:47 GMT