PORTUGUESE PARLIAMENTARY LEADER RESIGNS POST

UNCLAS LISBON 002841

SIPDIS

SIPDIS

E.O. 12958: N/A
TAGS: PREL PGOV PO
SUBJECT: PORTUGUESE PARLIAMENTARY LEADER RESIGNS POST

REF: A. 05 LISBON 1609


B. LISBON 1921

C. LISBON 2365


1. Summary: A Social Democratic parliamentary leader
resigned his leadership position in protest of his party,s
cooperation with the leftist parties to investigate alleged
CIA rendition flights at the expense of the Socialist
government. The inability to prove a negation means that the
CIA flight theory continues to make headlines. End summary.


2. The Vice President of the Social Democratic Party (PSD)
parliamentary group, Henrique Freitas, resigned his
leadership position December 13 to protest his party
leadership,s cooperation with leftist parties regarding a
visit of a European Parliament Commission investigating
alleged CIA flights in Europe.


3. The European Parliament has long alleged that the CIA
conducted illegal rendition flights through Europe to
Guantanamo Bay, Cuba as part of the global war on terrorism.
As noted reftels A-C, the Government of Portugal (GOP) has
consistently denied knowledge of or cooperation with any such
flight. Foreign Minister Luis Amado of the Socialist Party
(PS) had not accepted previous invitations to testify before
the European Parliament (EP). Hence, the EP Commission
visited Portugal to interview GOP officials.


4. When the EP Commission visited on December 6, the
President of the National Assembly, Jaime Gama of the PS,
refused permission to use the Senate Chamber for an official
meeting. Thereafter, the President of the PSD bloc offered
the use of its National Assembly offices for an informal
meeting. The Commission met with members of the PSD, the
Democratic Social Center, the Portuguese Communist Party, and
the Left Bloc for approximately twenty minutes in the PSD
offices.


5. Freitas ostensibly resigned his position in protest of his
party,s cooperation with the left wing parties who, in the
absence of any evidence, continue to try to embarrass the
government with allegations of cooperation with CIA rendition
flights. Freitas did not resign his parliamentary seat, but
has been replaced as PSD Parliamentary Group Vice President
by Fernando Negrao.


6. News coverage stressed that Freitas resigned due to CIA
flights. The resignation was not, however, in protest of any
such flights, but rather in protest of the continued
unsupported supposition that such flights occurred. A PSD
colleague of Freitas suggested that the flight issue itself
was less important to Freitas than the cooperation with the
parties of the extreme left. Moreover, his colleague
suggested, personal rivalries within the PSD may have been an
even greater stimulus to Freitas, action.

Comment
--------------

7. From our own view, the idea of a PSD official defending a
PS government by formally protesting his own party,s
cooperation with the left is deliciously ironic.
Nonetheless, this is yet another example of alleged CIA
flights affecting the political climate here. European
Parliamentarians and crusading journalists continue to get
cheap headlines, given that the GOP cannot prove that flights
did not occur. The philosophical impossibility of proving a
negation will continue to bedevil the GOP.
O'Neal