Italians kept U.S. forces in dark

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ROME -- Italian agents likely withheld information from U.S. counterparts about a cash-for-freedom deal with gunmen holding an Italian hostage for fear that Americans might block the trade, Italian news reports said yesterday.

The decision by operatives of Italy's SISMI military intelligence service to keep the CIA in the dark about the deal for the release of reporter Giuliana Sgrena, might have "short-circuited" communications with U.S. forces controlling the road from Baghdad to the city's airport, the newspaper La Stampa said.

That would help explain why American troops opened fire on a car whisking the released hostage to a waiting airplane, wounding Miss Sgrena and killing the Italian intelligence operative who had just negotiated her release.

Thousands of Italians yesterday congregated on the Altar to the Fatherland in Rome's vast Piazza Venezia to view the coffin of Nicola Calipari, the 52-year-old head of SISMI's international operations department.

Miss Sgrena, a reporter for the Communist daily Il Manifesto, charged yesterday that U.S. forces might have deliberately targeted her because Washington opposes Italy's policy of dealing with kidnappers.

"The United States doesn't approve of this [ransom] policy and so they try to stop it in any way possible," the veteran war reporter, 57, told Sky Italia TV.

Miss Sgrena, whose newspaper ardently opposes Italy's deployment of 3,000 troops in Iraq as part of the U.S.-led coalition, offered no direct evidence to support the charge and toned down the suggestion in a later interview with Reuters.

"If this happened because of a lack of information or deliberately, I don't know, but even if it was due to a lack of information, it is unacceptable," she said from her hospital room.

There were conflicting reports on the extent to which Italian authorities had informed their American counterparts about the operation, in which a reported $6 million was paid for the journalist's release.

Mr. Calipari and another senior SISMI operative concluded the deal for her release on Friday in Abu Dhabi and then flew to Baghdad aboard a secret service Falcon executive jet to collect her, La Stampa said.