BERLIN, June 30 -- The Italian government denied on Thursday that it knew in advance about the 2003 abduction of a radical Egyptian cleric whom investigators in Milan have charged was kidnapped by a crew of CIA operatives. Government officials also summoned the U.S. ambassador to meet with Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi to answer questions about the case.

Parliamentary Affairs Minister Carlo Giovanardi specifically denied a report in Thursday's Washington Post that quoted four CIA veterans as saying that the agency's station chief in Rome briefed and sought approval from his counterpart in Italy before the abduction took place.

Responding to questions about the article from lawmakers in the Italian Senate, Giovanardi said simply, "it's false." Later, in the Chamber of Deputies, he called the Post article "a report without any foundation, a false report, which the Italian government is able to deny with great calm."

Legislators in Rome have been pressing the government for weeks to provide a fuller explanation of whether it knew anything about the Feb. 17, 2003 disappearance of the cleric, Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr, also known as Abu Omar.

While the government has said in the past that it was not involved in Nasr's exit from the country, some opposition lawmakers said they were unconvinced by Thursday's denial and said evidence was mounting that Italian intelligence agencies were complicit in the operation.

"Obviously, they cannot admit this because it violates the Constitution, Italian laws and international treaties," said Luigi Malabarba, leader of the Communist Refoundation Party and a member of the parliamentary committee that oversees the Italian secret services, according to the Agenzia Giornalistica Europa news service.

Meantime, the Italian government said that it had asked U.S. Ambassador Mel Sendler meet with Berlusconi on Friday to respond to charges that the CIA was responsible for Nasr's disappearance. Katherine Sharp, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy in Rome, said she could not confirm the meeting and declined to comment.

An Italian judge last week issued warrants for the arrests of 13 CIA operatives, charging them with kidnapping Nasr off a Milan street as he was walking to a local mosque to attend noontime prayers.

According to investigative findings of Milan police and prosecutors that are detailed in court documents, the CIA operatives sprayed Nasr in the face with chemicals, stuffed him into a white van and took him to Aviano Air Base, a joint Italian-U.S. military installation. He was put on a plane to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, where he was transferred to another aircraft that took him to Cairo.

In a phone call a year later to his wife in Italy, he said he was subjected to electric shocks and other forms of physical abuse in Egypt, documents show. Nasr is believed to be in prison in Cairo; the Egyptian government has refused to say if he is in custody.

Senator Tana De Zueleta, another opposition lawmaker, said the government needed to do more to persuade the Italian public that it was unaware of the Nasr kidnapping. She accused Giovanardi of dodging questions from legislators and not taking the case more seriously. "He did seem to be rather embarrassed," she said. "He was very brief and laconic, given the gravity of the case."

"The silence is what is disconcerting," she added in a telephone interview from Rome. "We're calling on the government to prove that they were really not complicit, by expressing if nothing else their indignation and disappointment."