Word: namo
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...Until now, it was not obvious how to resolve Guantánamo," says Tomas Valasek, director of foreign policy and defense at the London-based Centre for European Reform. "The Portuguese initiative neatly allows the U.S. to tie up the loose ends. It's brilliant: it allows the U.S. to do something it had always wanted it to do. It also makes the E.U. look proactive, showing it is not just waiting for the Obama Administration to come in and set the pace...
...Amnesty International hailed the Portuguese offer as an important step forward in Europe's relationship with the U.S. on human rights. "It helps to end the ordeal of those unlawfully held, but also the international human rights scandal that is Guantánamo," says Daniel Gorevan, who heads Amnesty's Counter Terror with Justice campaign. "The E.U. can now exert a really positive influence as the new Administration tries to clear up the mess not just of Guantánamo but of the other related issues like torture and rendition...
...Although President George W. Bush has repeatedly said he wants to shut the Guantánamo camp, he reportedly turned down a proposal by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to bring the detainees to the U.S. And five years of cajoling European nations to take in detainees has had little success - only Albania had responded until now, accepting five Muslim Uighurs from China's Xinjiang region...
...forward? "This new European interest is undoubtedly motivated by a desire to work closely with the new Obama Administration," says State Department legal adviser John Bellinger. "It's a courageous step by the Portuguese, however. It's a recognition that governments cannot complain year after year that Guantánamo must close yet not be part of the international solution...
...eagerness to clean the slate and forge a different relationship," he says. But the price of European cooperation will be the expectation that from now on the U.S. fight terrorism on the basis of international rules and norms rather than on the unilateral improvisations that created the Guantánamo problem in the first place...