BERLIN -- A wave of investigations into whether the CIA broke laws and violated human rights while using Europe as a hub for secret transfers of terrorist suspects poses awkward questions for both European governments and Washington.

Pressure has grown on all sides in the past week to explain dozens of flights criss-crossing the continent by CIA planes, some suspected of delivering prisoners to jails in third countries where they may have been mistreated or tortured.

German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier, preparing this week for his first trip to Washington since taking office, told Bild am Sonntag newspaper the reports gave "grounds for concern".

The European Union and at least eight member states said last week they were seeking answers from the United States over the use of bases on the continent for such secret transfers, known as "renditions".

The Council of Europe, a leading human rights watchdog, set governments a three-month deadline to reveal what they know about the mystery flights and about a Washington Post report saying the CIA ran secret prisons in Eastern Europe.

A European diplomat specializing in security issues said there had certainly been cases where European airports had been used as staging posts during renditions. "The question is how many, and where to, and under what circumstances?"

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The diplomat said governments were in a lose-lose situation.

If they acknowledged they knew of such transfers at the time, they would face a political outcry.

But if they said they knew nothing about what was happening on their own soil, they would appear ineffectual and come under strong pressure to tighten controls over use of their airports and bases by the United States, or even to deny U.S. access.

Governments in Europe and beyond are coming under increasing pressure. Canadian opposition legislators accused the government on Friday of trying to hide the fact that planes used by the CIA to transport prisoners for interrogation had landed at Canadian airports.

In Germany, a report by the Berliner Zeitung newspaper last week said 85 CIA flights had taken off or landed at the U.S. Rhein-Main air base in Frankfurt between 2002 and 2004. Baghdad, Kabul and the Jordanian capital Amman were among the most frequent points of origin and destination.

But a flurry of similar reports, while unearthing more and more flights, did not establish whether they had prisoners on board or were simply carrying CIA personnel and equipment.

The United States has acknowledged using renditions to help in its declared war on terrorism but denies charges by human rights groups that delivering suspects for interrogation in third countries amounts to "outsourcing torture".

In the most advanced investigation to date, Italian prosecutors this month requested the extradition of 22 U.S. citizens, suspected of being CIA operatives, who are charged with snatching an Egyptian man on the streets of Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt, where he later said he was tortured.

German prosecutor Eberhard Bayer is investigating the same case because the man was first flown from Milan to Ramstein airbase in Germany.

But his probe into "deprivation of freedom and coercion" is so far directed against unknown persons because he does not know which, if any, of the 22 Americans identified by Italy took part in any crime on German soil.

"I can only conduct an investigation against people I can prove got out in Ramstein and transferred the kidnapped person onto another plane," said Bayer, who has been told by U.S. authorities at the base that they are not authorized to respond to his inquiries.

"At the moment there are grounds for investigation, but how far we will get with it, I don't know," Bayer told Reuters.

Council of Europe investigator Dick Marty, a Swiss member of parliament, was also pessimistic about U.S. co-operation.

"It doesn't seem like the U.S. government is helping us in this case," said Marty, who is looking into suspect flights by 31 aircraft.

"They can't confirm or deny. They say they are at war, so it will be difficult to obtain information from their side," he told reporters on Friday.

"It's a pity , because a certain transparency would be to the advantage of everybody, including the U.S."

(Additional reporting by Radu Marinas in Bucharest)

© 2005 Reuters Ltd.

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