Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has summoned the United States ambassador to Italy to explain CIA's kidnapping of an Islamic cleric from a Milan street in 2003, a minister said on Thursday.

Italian Minister of Relations with Parliament Carlo Giovanardi told the Senate that Italy had no knowledge of such an operation, denying that Italy had been informed by US authorities of an undercover operation targeting terror suspect Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.

He also said the ambassador would hold talks at the prime minister's office when he returned to Italy, possibly on Friday.

"Our secret services were not aware of the operation," Giovanardi said.

"It was never brought to the attention of the government or national institutions," he continued. "Consequently it is not conceivable that any operation of this type was authorized or that Italian organisms were involved."

Giovanardi said the government intended to "take all possible measures to discover the facts" so that transgressions of national and international law could be laid bare.

Abu Omar, the former imam of Milan's main mosque, disappeared mysteriously on Feb. 17, 2003. At the time the Egyptian national was being probed by Milan investigators, suspected of having links to international terrorism.

Italian prosecutors say he was abducted by the CIA as part of its program of "extraordinary rendition" in which suspected terrorists are transferred without court approval to third countries for interrogation.

Last week a Milan judge signed arrest warrants for 13 people that prosecutors say made up the CIA team which carried out the kidnapping.

Meanwhile the CIA's Rome station chief had sought approval from his Italian counterpart before a paramilitary team abducted the Egyptian cleric, the Washington Post reported Thursday, citing three CIA veterans with knowledge of the operation and one who reviewed it afterward.

Source: Xinhua