WASHINGTON, May 3 (Xinhuanet) -- The United States on Tuesday played down the differences with Italy over the reports of the Baghdad shooting which killed an Italian agent and said the reports were not "diametrically opposed."

    "The reports do differ in some ways, but they're not diametrically opposed. I think they do have a few differences on facts and they do give some different weights to different aspects of factors that contributed to the accident," State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said at a briefing.

    "The reports do come together and say that this was not in any way an intentional act against the Italians or the Italian Secret Service or the Italian hostage and that there are no grounds for assigning particular individual responsibility to the American soldiers that were involved in the incident," he said.

    On March 4, an Italian agent called Nicolas Calipari was killed by American soldiers as he was accompanying a newly freed Italian hostage outside the Baghdad airport.

    The US report absolved US soldiers of responsibility in the shooting and said the Italians' car was traveling too fast. The Italian report said the accident was caused by the inexperience and stress of the US soldiers. Enditem