Brussels, 05/05/2006 (Agence Europe) - A high ranking US State Department official, John B. Bellinger (US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice's top legal advisor), denied the string of allegations of secret CIA flights ('extraordinary rendition') and urged Europeans to assume their own responsibility. Addressing a handful of reporters, Bellinger said: 'The unchallenged allegation that all of these flights have got detainees on them is absurd,' referring to allegations of thousands of secret CIA flights to transport detainees to countries in which they may face torture, but he did not deny the existence of such flights. Bellinger admitted that the case was embarrassing to Washington, noting about the 'unchallenged allegation' that: 'Someone needs to challenge that. It is not possible for the US to prove a negative. But responsible European officials needs to say this has got out of hand.' Bellinger, like other US officials, is prepared to hold an informal meeting with members of the European Parliament's investigative committee when it travels to the United States on 8-12 May. The Italian MEP Claudio Fava, rapporteur for the committee, repeated his accusations on Thursday. In Vienna on 3 May, US justice minister Alberto Gonzales said the United States had the right to transfer prisoners from one country to another but not to countries where they would be tortured. Manfred Nowak, special United Nations rapporteur on torture and other forms of cruel, inhumane and degrading treatment, addressed the European Parliament's investigative committee in Brussels on 4 May, explaining that diplomatic assurances that the transferred prisoners would not be tortured were totally out of place because the very fact of making such assurances is in itself recognition of being in possession of information that the country in question systematically makes use of torture, which deprives it of any moral authority to give assurances to the contrary. On Friday, the United States rejected claims of torture when it attended a hearing at the UN committee on torture in Geneva, the first time since the September 11 attacks that Washington has been called upon by an international forum to defend its record on torture. Deputy US Secretary of State for democracy, Barry Lowenkron, said at the start of the hearing (expected to last until Monday) that the United States did not practice torture and was committed to eliminating it from the world.