EU Foreign Ministers Discuss Guantanamo Detainees
By VOA News
26 January 2009
European Union foreign ministers are debating whether to accept inmates from the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, prison to support the U.S. government's plan to close the controversial detention center.
The diplomats are in Brussels discussing how to help the new U.S. president, Barack Obama, fulfill his pledge to shut down the prison within a year.
EU Foreign Policy Chief Javier Solana told reporters Guantanamo is an "American problem" the United States has to solve, but that European nations will be ready to help if necessary. Solana said he thinks EU countries will take in some inmates, as long as the U.S. offers background information about the detainees beforehand.
But Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg, whose country holds the EU's rotating presidency, said each member nation must decide for itself whether to take in prisoners.
The Bush administration, which ended last week, said about 60 of the prison's 245 inmates are not security threats and could be released. But they could face face persecution, prison or execution if returned to their homelands.
Albania is the only European country so far to have accepted former Guantanamo detainees with no previous links to that country, taking in five members of China's Uighur ethnic minority in 2006. It has declined to take any more.
Some information for this report was provided by AFP, AP and Reuters
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