WARSAW, Poland -- Poland's prime minister has requested an investigation into allegations there were secret prisons in the country used by the CIA to hold and question terror suspects between 2001 and 2004.

The request by Prime Minister Donald Tusk was confirmed Monday by government spokesman Jacek Filipowicz.

In September 2006, President Bush acknowledged for the first time that terror suspects have been held in CIA-run prisons overseas, but did not specify where.

He made the disclosure after ordering the agency to transfer to the U.S. Navy base Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, some 14 so-called high-value detainees, among them the alleged Sept. 11, 2001 architects.

Allegations that CIA agents shipped prisoners through European airports to secret detention centers, including compounds in Eastern Europe, were first reported in November 2005. Human Rights Watch later identified Poland -- a U.S. ally in Afghanistan and Iraq -- and Romania as possible locations of the alleged secret prisons. Both countries have repeatedly denied involvement.

An investigator for the Council of Europe, a leading human rights group, said evidence pointed to the likelihood that planes linked to the CIA carrying terror suspects stopped in Romania and Poland and likely dropped off detainees there.

But the Helsinki Foundation for Human Rights, as well as Poland's ombudsman, Janusz Kochanowski, have pressed Tusk to investigate further.

''The prime minister replied . . . to say that he had asked the prosecutor general to hold a detailed investigation in order to clarify the matter,'' Filipowicz told The Associated Press.

He could not say when Tusk wrote to Prosecutor General Zbigniew Cwiakalski, who is also the country's justice minister.

Filipowicz also could not say whether Tusk had any new or relevant information about the allegations.

Rafal Grupinski, an aide to Tusk, said the premier requested the investigation because he saw the need for an ''official reaction'' to repeated calls for explanations.

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