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EU Puts Closing of GuantanamoBay on Agenda for Talks With Bush
Reed Landberg
Bloomberg
June 16, 2006
June 16 (Bloomberg) -- European Union leaders next week will press U.S. President George W. Bush to close the prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, saying that holding suspected terrorists without trial there is a human-rights violation.
``Nobody may be placed in a position where there is a legal vacuum with no legal rules,'' Austrian Foreign Minister Ursula Plassnik, whose nation holds the 25-nation bloc's rotating presidency, said late yesterday at an EU summit in Brussels. ``Human rights must be respected.''
Plassnik said EU leaders would put the issue at the top of their agenda when they meet Bush in Vienna on June 21. She noted U.S. allies, including Britain, have called for the camp to be closed and are anxious to see a move from the U.S.
Up to 750 people have been held at the camp at a U.S. naval base on the island of Cuba following the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has said the camp, which now has about 460 inmates, holds ``worst of the worst.'' Amnesty International calls it ``the gulag of our time.''
The EU's demands come after two Saudis and a Yemeni were found dead in their Guantanamo cells June 11, the first successful suicide attempts since the prison opened in 2002.
Last week, Bush said he ``would like to end Guantanamo.'' Closing the camp has been stymied by a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court to the war-crimes trials the military plans to hold for some detainees and by concerns that prisoners released from the facility might be tortured by their home governments or resume terrorist activities.
``We'd like it to be empty,'' Bush said June 9. ``We're now in the process of working with countries to repatriate people, but there are some that, if put out on the streets, could create grave harm to American citizens and other citizens of the world.''
In May, the United Nations called for Guantanamo to be closed, following similar appeals by the U.K.'s attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.
The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule this month on the legality of those tribunals, which were established by Bush's executive order in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks.
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