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Politics : I Will Continue to Continue, to Pretend.... -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: c.hinton who wrote (18202)	2/23/2006 12:06:49 AM
From: c.hinton	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 35834

Straw risks US fury over 'gulag' Guantanamo By George Jones (Filed: 22/02/2006) The confusion within the Government over Britain's attitude to the Guantanamo Bay detention camp deepened yesterday when Jack Straw, the Foreign Secretary, compared it to a Soviet-style "gulag". It was the most critical description yet by a member of the Cabinet of the camp where terrorist suspects are held indefinitely by the United States authorities. Jack Straw: comments are likely to anger the US Peter Hain, the Northern Ireland Secretary, called last week for its closure, but Tony Blair said only that it was an "anomaly" which would at some point have to be dealt with, while John Reid, the Defence Secretary, said it was a matter for the US to decide. Lord Goldsmith, the Attorney General, has also criticised privately the holding of suspects without charge or trial. Mr Straw, interviewed on BBC Radio 4's Today programme during a visit to Baghdad, said that it was a decision for Washington whether and when the detention camp at a US military base in Cuba should be closed down. "I am absolutely clear that the US has no intention of maintaining a gulag in Guantanamo Bay. "They want to see the situation resolved and they would like it other than it is. However, that is the situation that they have," he said. His reference to it being a "gulag" - a forced labour camp in the former Soviet Union - is likely to anger the Americans. It comes a week after a United Nations report called for the closure of the camp, saying the treatment of detainees, some of whom have been held for more than four years, violated their rights to physical and mental health. The UN expressed concern at the use of excessive force during transportation and force-feeding through nasal tubes during hunger strikes, which it says amounts to torture. Downing Street refused to endorse Mr Straw's comments or say whether the Prime Minister agreed that the camp was a gulag. Downing Street said Mr Blair's position that Guantanamo Bay was an "anomaly" had not changed. Foreign Office officials said Mr Straw stood by his "gulag" comment. In the interview he acknowledged that a large number of people had already been released or taken to trial. "The problem is what to do with those that are left, and that is a matter which the US administration are going to have to take their own decisions on, and frankly I'm not going to second-guess the decisions they make."