The former American Secretary of State, Colin Powell, has said that European leaders should not be shocked by reports that the US government moves terror suspects from one country to another.
He said the practice, known as rendition, was neither 'new nor unknown' in Europe.
Mr Powell has also spoken of differences he had with other key figures in the Bush Administration about Iraq.
In a wide-ranging interview with the BBC, Mr Powell said he and the Defence Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, disagreed on how to reconstruct the country after the war.
And he said he was not warned that some of the intelligence used to justify military action was dubious.
Recently Mr Powell's successor, Condoleezza Rice, was forced to defend the practice of rendition during a trip to Europe.
Dr Rice said it was a decades-old instrument used by the United States when local governments could not detain or prosecute a suspect, and traditional extradition was not an option.
In such cases, that government could make a sovereign choice to co-operate in a rendition, she said.
