"Should the accusations be accurate, I would be forced to draw serious consequences," Frattini said at a security conference in Berlin.

He said that any EU country found to have harboured one of the reported prison camps could have their voting rights in the Council of Ministers, the body which groups the 25 EU heads of government, suspended.

Frattini said the operation of such camps on EU soil would violate the bloc's rules governing freedom and human rights.

He said the EU had made contact several days ago with the White House about possible secret CIA activities in Europe, but Washington had "unfortunately not yet given any formal assurance" that the reports were untrue.

The Council of Europe's parliamentary assembly had already announced a probe into reports of the CIA operating clandestine prisons in some European countries.

Germany and other EU countries are demanding the US government provide "clarifications" after reports that the CIA flew suspected Islamic extremists to secret prisons in Europe.

Germany has already opened an investigation into a case in which an Egyptian suspect was transported via Ramstein in western Germany, the largest US airbase in Europe, to Egypt where his supporters say he was tortured.

A number of other European countries have opened inquiries into alleged CIA plane landings, including Finland, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Spain and Sweden.

New German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier was expected to raise the issue of the flights when he meets US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in Washington on Tuesday.

His deputy minister Guenter Gloser said on Monday he believed that Steinmeier would push Washington for an explanation.

"Against the backdrop of this debate, we will be looking for ways to clear up this issue," Gloser told Bayerischer Rundfunk radio.

Steinmeier said in an interview published Sunday that he was concerned by the CIA plane accounts but would reserve judgment until Washington addressed the subject.

German Defence Minister Franz Josef Jung, on a visit to Paris on Monday, said his country wanted to know if "acts of torture" had taken place.

"That's the point that worries us, legitimately I think. I hope that all this can be explained away," Jung said.

Meanwhile the German government's coordinator for transatlantic relations, Karsten Voigt, said that US lawmakers could put more pressure on President George W. Bush than European politicians.

"We can count on the fact that this will be probed by the American public, particularly by the US Congress," Voigt told DeutschlandRadio Kultur.

All rights reserved. � 2005 Agence France-Presse. Sections of the information displayed on this page (dispatches, photographs, logos) are protected by intellectual property rights owned by Agence France-Presse. As a consequence, you may not copy, reproduce, modify, transmit, publish, display or in any way commercially exploit any of the content of this section without the prior written consent of Agence France-Presse.

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