Italy pardons US Air Force officer

ITALY'S president has pardoned a US Air Force colonel convicted in absentia by Italian courts over the CIA-conducted abduction of an Egyptian terror suspect from a Milan street.

President Giorgio Napolitano's office said the head of state granted the pardon "in hopes of giving a solution to a situation considered by the United States to be without precedent because of the aspect of convicting a US military officer of NATO for deeds committed on Italian soil."

Joseph Romano was security chief of northern Italy's Aviano air base where the abducted Egyptian Muslim cleric was taken before being flown out of the country and eventually to Egypt.

He was one of 23 Americans convicted in absentia in the case and whose convictions were upheld last year by Italy's highest criminal court. Three other Americans had been acquitted in a first trial because of diplomatic immunity, but earlier this year, a Milan appeals court convicted the three, who included a former CIA station chief.

The trial was the first in the world involving the CIA's extraordinary rendition program in which terror suspects were abducted and transferred to third countries where torture is permitted. Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar, was abducted in 2003 while walking down a street in Milan, where he preached. The cleric was hustled by car off to Aviano, then transferred to a US military base in Germany, before being flown to Egypt, where he said he was tortured. He was eventually released.

Romano's defence said he was never formally notified of charges. Twenty-three Americans were convicted, all in absentia, and Italy's highest criminal court last year upheld the convictions.

That top court decision paved the way for extradition requests by Italian authorities, but so far none have come from Premier Mario Monti's government, which is staying on in a caretaker role following elections earlier this year. Napolitano, as president, has the power to grant pardons, and he issued Romano's pardon a month before his seven-year-term expires.

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Hungary to 'force through' power price cut

HUNGARY'S Prime Minister Viktor Orban says his government will continue to cut household electricity bills "by force" if necessary despite protests by energy providers, in his latest broadside against foreign firms.

"If agreement is not possible, the cabinet will cut utility prices by force to bring them down to average European levels," Orban said during a weekly interview on state radio, calling the cuts "key to Hungary's success".

He accused foreign utility firms active in Hungary of "taking hundreds of billions (of forints) of profits back home" and said companies making huge profits had taken concerted action against Hungarian families.

Orban's right-wing government recently obliged distributors to carry the cost of a 10-per cent cut in retail prices of electricity, gas, and district heating from the start of the year.

The companies affected are subsidiaries of German groups RWE and Energie Baden-Wuerttemberg (EnBW), as well as ENI of Italy.

This is not the first time that Orban, whose unorthodox economic policies have included special "crisis taxes" on certain sectors and nationalising private pension funds, has lashed out at foreign companies.

Earlier this month he told a business conference that he would like to at least halve foreign ownership of Hungarian banks, saying the scale of non-Hungarian involvement was "not healthy".

On Thursday US credit rating agency Standard & Poor's cut its outlook on its Hungary rating to "negative" in part because of worries about the "predictability and credibility" of policymaking.

It also cited concerns about the independence of Hungary's central bank and the changing of the constitution this month, something which heightened worries in Brussels and Washington about democracy in the EU member state.

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