Germany will question US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice when she visits Berlin on Tuesday over allegations that the CIA used German airports to transport terror suspects to secret prisons.

The German government confirmed that they had received a list of 437 flights by the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) through Germany in recent years.

"The list was compiled and given to the German government," said Jenus Ploetner, a foreign ministry spokesman at a briefing.

Rice is to arrive at Berlin later on Monday and expected to meet with German Chancellor Angela Merkel on Tuesday.

Merkel will question Rice over the allegations, the German news agency DPA reported.

The German magazine Der Spiegel reported Saturday that two aircraft, registered to private companies but to carry out CIA work, passed through German airspace or touched down on German soil 137 times in 2002 and 146 times in 2003.

The airplanes stopped in Berlin, Frankfurt and the US Ramstein Air Force Base.

However, the list, compiled by the national air traffic control service in response to a question from the Left Party, gave no indication what was aboard the planes, the report said.

Media reports in Europe had reported that the CIA had transported terror suspects across Germany to secret prisons in the Eastern European countries.

The European Union (EU) has threatened to sanction any EU member countries if they had such prisons on their territories.

Rice will also visit Romania, Ukraine and Brussels where she will attend a NATO meeting.

Source: Xinhua