Monday's meeting between the two most powerful women in the world resulted in a diplomatic spat and highlighted a growing rift between Europe and America over whether the end always justifies the means in the war on terror.

Rice's trip was meant to signal a new start for trans-Atlantic ties, but if anything, relations are worse now. Merkel irritated US officials by telling journalists after their meeting that the Washington had admitted making a mistake in the case of Khaled al-Masri, a Lebanese-born German citizen who was abducted by the CIA and claims that he was tortured while held in secret custody.

"We discussed the one case which was accepted as a mistake by the government of the United States," Merkel told a joint news conference with Rice after their meeting on Tuesday. US officials later told journalists that Rice had done nothing of the sort. "We are not quite sure what was in her head," the Reuters news agency quoted a senior American official as saying.

The US government has informed the German government about al-Masri's case but has not admitted making mistakes. Rice has merely given assurances that any errors made by the CIA would be corrected as and when they arose, officials said.

The US irritation may stem from concern that any admission of an error would hurt the US government's position in US lawsuits against it. Al-Masri, 42, was abducted while on holiday in Macedonia in late 2003 after being mistakenly identified as a suspect in the 9/11 attacks. 

He was then taken to Afghanistan, where he alleges he was drugged and beaten while being held captive in a secret CIA prison. The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) filed a lawsuit on his behalf in the US Federal Court in Virginia on Tuesday.

Firm language from Merkel

Merkel, who supported President George W. Bush over the Iraq war and has pledged to repair the damage her predecessor Gerhard Schröder did to relations with the US government, may have surprised Rice with her robust comments on allegations that the US runs a network of "ghost flights" and secret prisons around the world where terror suspects can be interrogated with little concern for international law.

"For my part I made clear that I as German chancellor have to live up to our laws and our international obligations, and that we refer back to them and adhere to them," Merkel told the news conference.

Rice's comment that the US does not torture terrorism suspects met with skepticism in Berlin. Karsten Voigt, the German government's coordinator on German-US relations, said: "The question remains whether she means the same thing by torture as we do."

In an apparent response to the European criticism, Rice on Wednesday announced that US personnel would be banned worldwide from subjecting prisoners to cruelty -- a shift in policy as that ban has until now applied to interrogations on US soil.

"As a matter of US policy, the United States' obligations under the CAT (Convention against Torture), which prohibits cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment -- those obligations extend to US personnel wherever they are, whether they are in the United States or outside of the United States," said Rice, speaking in the Ukrainian capital Kiev, the third stop on her European tour.

For commentators in Germany, the US practice of "extraordinary rendition," or secretly transferring suspects to third countries, including some outside Europe that routinely use torture, reveals how far Europe and the United States have drifted apart since Sept. 11 on how much leeway secret services should have in pursuing terrorists.

"Condoleezza Rice gave the best example of this by adopting what almost seemed like a blackmailing tone in saying that whoever discloses the work of their intelligence services would have to live with a higher threat of terror," stated an editorial in the liberal daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. "Rice came to Germany to begin a new era. She has resoundingly failed to do so."

German officials under fire

Meanwhile al-Masri's case has produced a scandal in Germany following a Washington Post article on Sunday that the United States told the previous German government about al-Masri's case in May 2004, and asked it to keep the matter secret.

The report has prompted accusations of hypocrisy against Schröder's government, which publicly opposed Bush while -- apparently -- tacitly complying with its "renditions" policy.

Former Interior Minister Otto Schily, in the firing line because he was reportedly told about al-Masri by the then US ambassador to Berlin, rejected accusations that he had failed to act on the information.

Schily told the Die Zeit newspaper that he had received no information "that would have put me in a position to prevent a German citizen from coming to harm –- at a point when I could have taken action." In a swipe at the Bush administration, Schily said he had urged the Americans to give full assistance to the German prosecutor investigating al-Masri's case. "Unfortunately that didn't happen in an appropriate fashion," Schily told the paper.