A German man yesterday filed a landmark lawsuit against the CIA claiming he was wrongfully abducted as a terrorism suspect and sent to Afghanistan for interrogation as part of a US policy that has prompted uproar in Europe.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel said US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had admitted during talks in Berlin that the United States had made a mistake in Khaled Al Masri's case. She said a German parliamentary committee was launching an investigation.

Masri, who is being represented by the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), alleges in his suit that he was kidnapped on December 31, 2003 while on holiday in Macedonia and then flown by CIA agents for interrogation in Afghanistan in what turned out to be a case of mistaken identity.

Masri, who is of Lebanese descent, said his aim in filing the suit was to force the US government to acknowledge its error and apologise.

"The United States does not condone torture. It is against US law to be involved in torture or to conspire to commit torture and it is also against the US's international obligations," Rice said.

"This is a war in which intelligence is the absolute key to success," she said, as it was essential "to get to perpetrators of such crimes before they commit them."

"Without good intelligence you can simply not protect civilians from the attacks we have seen around the world," added Rice, who is due also to visit Romania, Ukraine and NATO headquarters in Belgium.

Rice and her Romanian counterpart yesterday signed a historic pact establishing the first American military bases in a former Warsaw Pact country.

Rice said the US takeover of bases near the Black Sea - putting American forces within closer striking distance of potential targets in the Middle East and Central Asia - would help "take terrorists off the streets" and save lives around the world.

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