World | USA
'I'd like to end Guantanamo'
US President George W. Bush yesterday acknowledged European concerns about the 460 detainees the United States is holding at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said he wanted to see the prison camp shut down.
- AP
- Published: 00:00 June 22, 2006
Vienna: US President George W. Bush yesterday acknowledged European concerns about the 460 detainees the United States is holding at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and said he wanted to see the prison camp shut down.
Across the 25-nation bloc, mounting discontent over the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, the campaign in Iraq and the purported existence of secret CIA terror prisons in Eastern Europe have threatened to eclipse the talks.
Bush acknowledged past disputes about the US-led invasion of Iraq.
"I can understand the differences ... but what's past is past and what's ahead is a hopeful democracy in the Middle East," he said.
He also acknowledged European concerns about the Guantanamo detainees, but he said the group includes some dangerous people who need to be brought to justice.
"I understand their concerns," Bush said. "I'd like to end Guantanamo. I'd like it to be over with." Bush said 200 detainees had been sent home, and that most of the remaining 460 are from Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Afghanistan.
"There are some who need to be tried in US courts," he said. "They're cold-blooded killers. They will murder somebody if they are let out on the street."
Barroso said the leaders also discussed how to reach a balanced conclusion to a global trade deal. The United States is among 149 nations trying to finish the international round of trade talks known as the Doha Round, named after the city in Qatar where they began.
Negotiators have missed several deadlines. There are disagreements over cutting farm barriers in Europe, the United States and other rich nations. Major developing countries, such as India and Brazil, also are refusing to significantly reduce trade barriers that protect their manufacturing and service industries. "After the good exchange of views we had today during this summit, I'm convinced I'm really convinced that it's possible to have a successful outcome of the Doha talks," Barroso said.
Bush dismissed as "absurd" a recent poll by the Pew Research Centre for the People and the Press in which European nations said US involvement in Iraq was a worse problem than Iran and its nuclear programme.
The summit host, Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel whose country holds the rotating presidency of the 25-nation EU rose to Bush's defense, which seemed to catch the American president by surprise. "I think it's grotesque to say that America is a threat to the peace in the world compared with North Korea, Iran, a lot of countries," Schuessel said, adding that it was Bush who raised Guantanamo and other thorny issues.
About 1,200 students chanting "Bush Go Home!" rallied at a train station to protest the US president's visit to Vienna, where 1,000 police officers were assigned to deal with demonstrators. Another 2,000 officers patrolled the city. Leading the students was US anti-war campaigner Cindy Sheehan, who lost her son in Iraq and energised the anti-war movement last summer with a protest outside Bush's Texas ranch.
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