GUANTANAMO UPDATE….In the Washington Post today, Peter Finn reports that European countries, which have had an obviously fraught relationship with the Bush administration over Guantanamo and the legal treatment of terrorist suspects in general, is looking forward to working more closely with Barack Obama on these issues. 
In particular, they may be willing to accept the resettlement of Guantanamo detainees into their countries:
The Europeans want a clear commitment to close Guantanamo Bay and an acceptance of common legal principles in the fight against terrorism, including those regarding the treatment of suspects, European officials said. A series of meetings between the United States and the European Union on a legal framework for combating terrorism has considerably narrowed differences on the application of human rights law, refugee law and humanitarian law, said Amado and John B. Bellinger III, a legal adviser at the State Department.
The Europeans also want Obama to agree to transfer a small number of detainees to the United States before they attempt to sell a resettlement program to their own citizens.
….Guantanamo Bay currently has about 250 prisoners, according to the Pentagon. And some European officials said a number of governments are considering the logistics of resettling a majority of the 60 prisoners already cleared for release by U.S. authorities.
The Pentagon has not identified the 60, but a study released by the Brookings Institution last week found that as well as the Chinese Uighurs, the group includes detainees from Yemen, Tunisia, Algeria, Uzbekistan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Libya and the Palestinian territories. The Brookings study found that these prisoners “concentrate at the less dangerous end of the spectrum.”
The whole story is a little hard to follow, which is probably because nothing even close to definitive has been settled yet. Mostly it’s just a feeling that EU countries are looking forward to a more constructive relationship with Obama than with Bush, and may be willing to make some compromises on their end to start things off on the right foot.
It’s all very mushy at this point, but obviously good news regardless. The question of what to do with Guantanamo detainees that nobody wants is a genuinely difficult one. If the EU helps out here, it makes it a lot more likely that Guantanamo will be shut down sooner rather than later.
