European countries will meet next month to discuss taking detainees from Guantanamo Bay if the incoming Obama administration decides, as promised, to close the prison, a German diplomat said Monday.
“We have always supported any policy that went toward closing Guantanamo,” Ulrich A. Sante, the press counselor for the German Embassy in Washington, told The Washington Times.
Portugal has already raised the issue in a recent letter from Foreign Minister Luis Amado to his counterparts in the other 26 members of the European Union.
Assistant Secretary of State for Europe Daniel Fried said Monday that he was delighted by Mr. Amado’s action.
“The letter by Amado was welcome and it reflects a European understanding that to get past this problem, we all have to do our part,” Mr. Fried said.
Mr. Sante said the EU Council of Foreign Ministers would meet in late January to discuss accepting detainees from Guantanamo.
In the meantime, he said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier has asked the German Foreign Ministry’s legal department to “clear all issues regarding the detainees so we will be prepared” to respond to a U.S. request to resettle some of the prisoners in Germany.
“The German government’s opinion is that the closure [of Guantanamo] should not be made impossible because of the question of inmates who are innocent but cannot be reintegrated into their countries of origin,” Mr. Sante said.
There are about 250 prisoners left at Guantanamo of whom about 60 have been cleared for release by U.S. authorities.
A U.S. federal judge in October ordered 17 Chinese Uighurs to be released for settlement in the United States. Host families were found for the 17 in Virginia, but the prisoners have not yet been freed.
President-elect Barack Obama promised during the campaign to close Guantanamo, which has undermined the U.S. reputation for providing due process to detainees. Reports of poor treatment in Guantanamo have been especially harmful to the U.S. image in Muslim nations, although Vice President Cheney told The Times last week that the prison was a “first-rate facility.”
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