Probe targets Poland, Romania

Romania ordered a parliamentary investigation.
BUCHAREST, Romania (AP) -- Romania and Poland, stalwart allies in the U.S.-led global war on terror, came under increasing fire Tuesday amid widening reports that they hosted secret CIA prisons where top Al-Qaida suspects were interrogated.
Top leaders in both countries denied it, but lawmakers in Romania called for a parliamentary investigation. The stakes are high: Although they have curried favor with the United States, any proof of complicity could leave the former communist nations isolated and scorned in a Europe demanding a full accounting from Washington, and threaten Romania's drive to join the European Union in 2007.
"We are open to any kind of investigation," said Romanian Prime Minister Calin Popescu Tariceanu, visiting EU headquarters in Brussels, Belgium. He said the country would throw open any suspect facilities to demonstrate "good intentions and good faith."
But Tariceanu added: "There is no proof, merely speculation."
In Poland, authorities said CIA prisons would be illegal, though they were not planning an inquiry without evidence.
"For an investigation to start, there should be some sort of evidence, proof that this in fact took place in Poland," Julita Sobczyk, a spokeswoman for the prosecutor general, Zbigniew Ziobro, told The Associated Press. Ziobro is also Poland's justice minister.
Human rights investigation
The Council of Europe, the continent's top human rights watchdog, has launched an investigation. EU leaders say any member states found to have been involved could have their voting rights suspended -- a warning that unnerves some Poles, whose country joined the bloc only last year.
President Aleksander Kwasniewski and other leaders repeatedly have denied allegations that Poland ever hosted so-called "black site" prisons.
"Neither now, nor in the past, were any inmates held in any military installations," Defense Ministry spokesman Piotr Paszkowski said Tuesday.
ABC News reported Monday night that two secret CIA prisons in eastern Europe were closed last month and 11 Al-Qaida suspects were transferred to a facility in North Africa. The report, which ABC attributed to current and former CIA officers who spoke on condition of anonymity, said the prisons were shut down after Human Rights Watch said it had evidence suggesting such facilities existed in Romania and Poland.
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