U.S. says sorry to UK on rendition flights

By Sue Pleming

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The United States said on Thursday it had expressed regret to close ally Britain over inaccurate information Washington gave about U.S. planes carrying terrorism suspects that refueled on a British island.

"We came up with fresh information that in short order we shared with the British government," said State Department spokesman Sean McCormack. "We regret that there was an error in providing initially that inaccurate information to a good friend and ally," he told reporters.

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice telephoned Britain's Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Wednesday to express U.S. regret over the error, he told reporters.

Miliband told Britain's parliament earlier on Thursday that contrary to earlier U.S. assurances, two planes used for "rendition flights" in 2002 had refueled at a U.S. base on the British Indian Ocean island of Diego Garcia.

The British government had previously insisted it was not aware of any British territory being used to transfer terrorism suspects outside normal extradition procedures since U.S. President George W. Bush took office in 2001.

McCormack strongly denied there was an initial cover-up in providing information to the British government about the flights and attributed it to an "administrative error" by the Central Intelligence Agency.

"This was nothing other than an administrative error. People did nothing but act in good faith based on the information that they had," added McCormack.

CIA director Michael Hayden said in a statement there had been flawed records kept of the two flights in 2002.