U.S. claims no military wrongdoing in Italian official's death

ROME -- The Italian government said Sunday it was preparing to release its report on the killing of an Italian intelligence agent by U.S. soldiers in Baghdad which would shed light on problems of coordination with American authorities in Iraq and with U.S. rules of engagement at checkpoints.\nThe Italian Foreign Ministry said it planned to release its version of events in the March 4 "friendly fire" shooting death of agent Nicola Calipari on Monday, two days after the U.S. military reported its investigation had cleared American soldiers wrongdoing in the checkpoint shooting which also injured Giuliana Sgrena, the Italian journalist that Calipari had just freed from insurgent captivity.\nItaly and the United States have differed over crucial points about the incident since the first hours after the killing of Calipari, who was hailed as a national hero at home. The two Italian experts who participated in a joint U.S-Italian probe of the shooting refused to sign off on the American conclusions. After several days of negotiations failed to yield a common final report, both sides agreed to disagree on the findings.\n"Despite, in fact, the many points on which the two sides registered similar assessments, the principal aspects on which it wasn't possible to pinpoint shared assessments regard, above all, the rules of engagement and the coordination with the competent authorities in Iraq," the foreign ministry said in a statement on its Web site. The Italian report will be made public at noon EDT Monday, it said.\nThe U.S. conclusions have angered Italians and caused friction between the two allies.\nThe U.S. report released Saturday found the car Calipari was riding in as he headed to Baghdad airport with the ex-hostage had failed to slow down as it approached the checkpoint and the soldiers who fired at it acted in accordance with American military rules of engagement. It also found the killing may have been prevented by better coordination between the Italian government and U.S. forces in Iraq.\nThe U.S. report contained many blacked-out portions, including the names of the sole soldier who fired at the Italians and other soldiers at the checkpoint as well as their units. But due to an apparent error, the blacked-out portions could be read in some versions downloaded from the Internet. The U.S. military said they were looking into how that happened.\nRome prosecutors are doing their own probe and have said they wanted to obtain a list of the soldiers at the checkpoint, and the revelation of their names could assist them if the try to prosecute the Americans involved.\nSome of the blacked out material in the American report that could be read on Internet versions also discussed training the soldiers' received in handling checkpoints.\nThe Italian prosecutors handling the separate investigation are awaiting the completion of tests on the car in which Calipari was riding to learn more about the vehicle's speed and the distance and direction from which the gunfire came. U.S. authorities allowed the bullet-riddled car to be flown to Rome a few days ago.\nThe two Italian survivors of the shooting -- Sgrena, a journalist, and another agent who was driving -- insisted the car was traveling at about 25 to 30 mph on a rain-slicked road and that soldiers at the temporary checkpoint flashed a beam of light at them in apparent warning just before the shooting began.\nThe U.S. military contends the car was going about twice as fast as the Italians say, and that warning shots were fired before soldiers directed shots at the engine block of the car.