A government spokesman says Latvia is not one of the East European countries that reportedly have been home to secret CIA bases where suspected al Qaeda members are interrogated.

The location of all official detention sites is publicly available information, Arno Pjatkins, press secretary for Prime Minister Aigars Kalvītis, told the Web portal Delfi on Nov. 3.

The Latvian government’s denial was one of several from East European officials following a Nov. 2 report in The Washington Post. The newspaper reported that the CIA over the last four years has used secret bases in eight countries, include “several democracies in Eastern Europe” that were not named.

The secret detention sites, the newspaper said, were used to hide the interrogations from the public and even from Congress.

Although the paper reported that Thailand and Afghanistan are among the eight countries, it did not name the other nations at the request of U.S. officials.

“They argued that the disclosure might disrupt counterterrorism efforts in those countries and elsewhere and could make them targets of possible terrorist retaliation,” the newspaper reported.

The New York-based Human Rights Watch on Nov. 3 suggested two of the countries might be Poland and Romania. The organization used flight records to draw its conclusion. Polish and Romanian offjcials denied that their countries have CIA bases.

Visa-free travel for Latvian citizens to the United States continues to be pursued by government officials. A delegation will travel Oct. 31-Nov. 1 to Washington, D.C., to meet with U.S. officials over the issue, the Latvian Foreign Ministry announced Oct. 26.

Led by Normans Penke, the ministry’s state secretary, the delegation is expected to meet with officials at the U.S. State Department and the Department of Homeland Security.

While U.S. citizens can enter Latvia without a visa and stay up to 90 days, Latvian citizens must apply for a visa.

In May, U.S. and Latvian officials agreed to a “roadmap” that may lead to the visa requirement being waived. The plan includes a campaign in Latvia to publicize problems that occur when U.S. visas are abused or when a visitor overstays a visa.

In 2004, a total of 10,140 Latvian citizens entered the United States for business, pleasure, study or other reasons, according to the Yearbook of Immigration Statistics.

A Soviet propaganda pamphlet about the Latvian war veterans’ group Daugavas Vanagi, which reportedly led Western investigators to pursue war crimes charges against many individuals, is the topic of a new book by historian Andrievs Ezergailis.

The new book, Nazi/Soviet Disinformation About the Holocaust in Nazi-Occupied Latvia: “Daugavas Vanagi: Who Are They?” Revisited, was scheduled to be unveiled during an Oct. 27 ceremony at the Museum of the Occupation of Latvia in downtown Rīga, according to a museum press release.

The propaganda pamphlet Daugavas Vanagi: Who Are They? was the 1963 English translation of a Latvian-language work released in 1962. Ezergailis has previously written that the pamphlet “became a kind of a handbook for war-crimes prosecutory offices in West Germany, the United States, Great Britain, Canada and Australia.”

The book, which costs LVL 8, is published by the Occupation Museum Fund. A total of 1,000 copies were printed, said Zanda Dūma, the museum’s public affairs coordinator.

Ezergailis, a professor emeritus of history at New York’s Ithaca College, is the author of a number of books, including The Holocaust in Latvia, 1941-1944 : The Missing Center, released in 1996, and Stockholm Documents: The German Occupation of Latvia, released in 2002.