CAIRO, Egypt – With European allies embracing Secretary of State Rice’s recent statements expressing America’s prohibition of torture at home and abroad for American personnel, some analysts in Washington are worried that future intelligence cooperation with the continent may be strained.

Yesterday, NATO’s secretary-general, Jaap de Hoop Scheffer, told reporters that Ms. Rice’s support for international human rights law “had cleared the air.” Nonetheless, recent disclosures regarding secret prisons in Eastern Europe along with the case of a German citizen, Khalid al-Masri, who was abducted, taken to Afghanistan for interrogation, and later found innocent, have cast a pall over the usually strong cooperation between the CIA and Europe’s intelligence services.

In particular, the policy of rendition, or the snatching of terrorists in foreign countries to transport to other countries where they are either tried or interrogated, may now be in peril.

“Despite the positive atmosphere, we are witnessing a setback in Atlantic relations and a reversal of some of the repair that has taken place since Bush’s re-election,” a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Charles Kupchan, said yesterday. “The intelligence cooperation has been the bright light of the Atlantic effort to fight terror. Even at the lowest moment, the United States, the French, and the Germans were cooperating on matters of intelligence and law enforcement. And this new chapter certainly puts at risk at least to some extent that level of cooperation.”

A fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, Gary Schmitt, who is a former staff director of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, yesterday said he believed that Ms. Rice did fairly well at the government level. But he also conceded: “If public officials feel the heat is too much to take, they will be less cooperative. One reason rendition is happening is because formal extradition has been difficult. So governments were willing through intelligence services to bypass the formal extradition procedures.”

This view also was shared by the director of the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists, Steven Aftergood. “Undoubtedly these disclosures and the controversy make life difficult for the CIA and its foreign counterparts. They are under increased scrutiny and intense pressure. And if they have not already cut back on their activities, then they are bound to do so in the near future. It’s too hard to conduct this kind of operation under a spotlight, even if the public perceptions are exaggerated or erroneous in part.”

Ms. Rice told reporters yesterday that in almost all of her meetings, she has had discussions on questions of interrogation practices, and she acknowledged the importance of having discussions with colleagues. But she also underlined the point that intelligence is vital in the war against international terrorism. “If we can get our citizens to understand that in this new kind of war, intelligence is the key to preventing attacks, then I think we will have accomplished something very important here,” she said.

A former CIA operations officer and Rome station chief, Duane Clarridge, said he did not expect the recent row between America and its European allies to dent the intelligence partnership.

“The intelligence and security services in these countries know what they are up against. The politicians can say what they will, and these services are going to go out and do their job. It’s in everyone’s interest to continue cooperating. If no one else got bombed and no one had 10,000 cars put on fire, it might be different,” he said.