UNDER siege over allegations of secret CIA detention centres in Europe, Condoleezza Rice, the American secretary of state, is to go on the offensive when she meets European allies this week.

Convinced that the media, rather than Europe’s leaders, are making the biggest fuss about reports of “black sites” housing top Al-Qaeda prisoners, Rice has decided she can afford to brush off mounting criticism of America’s human rights record.

The White House adopted an aggressive tone when Scott McClellan, the presidential spokesman, said on Friday that George W Bush did not condone torture. “When it comes to human rights, there is no greater leader than the United States of America,” he said.

Rice has promised to respond to a letter from Jack Straw, the British foreign secretary, written on behalf of the European Union about the reports. But she is not expected to go into detail about the existence of the alleged sites, nor about suspicions that European airports have been used for CIA flights on which terrorist suspects were taken to third countries with harsh interrogation methods.

Instead she will remind European governments that after the London and Madrid bombings they are in the battle against terrorism together. It is their responsibility “to explain as clearly as possible to their publics” what they are doing in the war on terror, said Sean McCormack, a State Department spokesman.

Straw is likely to accept Rice’s assurances that human rights violations are not tolerated, despite the Abu Ghraib prisoner abuse scandal and controversy over conditions at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. A British official said there was “an understanding that dealing with terrorists involves a constant balancing act that is difficult to get right”.

While Rice’s stance may spark public outrage, she is guaranteed a warm welcome from Chancellor Angela Merkel in Berlin tomorrow. The new German leader is determined to repair the damage done to relations with America by her predecessor, Gerhard Schröder, and has offered to wait “patiently” for Rice’s response to the allegations about detention centres.

On Tuesday Rice will touch down in Bucharest to sign a deal opening American facilities in Romania that will provide stopover points for US missions in the Middle East and central Asia. One of them is likely to be the air force base of Mihail Kogalniceaunu, which has come under suspicion as an alleged “black site”.

Parts of Mihail Kogalniceaunu were off limits to Romanian authorities from 2001 to 2004, according to Ioan Mircea Pascu, the former defence minister. Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, visited the base in 2004 but the Romanian government has denied any knowledge of detention sites.

The Washington Post has claimed that America had operated secret prisons in eight countries. Human Rights Watch identified Poland and Romania as the most likely host nations.

Alvaro Gil Robles, the human rights commissioner at the Council of Europe, last week accused the Americans of having run a Guantanamo-style prison camp at Bondsteel in Kosovo. He said that when he visited in 2002 it housed 13 north African detainees who had been stripped of their legal rights and placed in solitary confinement.

Additional reporting: David Crossland, Berlin, and Bob Graham, Bucharest

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