DRESDEN, Germany — President Barack Obama said today that he didn’t ask Germany to take specific detainees from Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and that Chancellor Angela Merkel did not agree to any “hard commitments.”
Obama said he is working with U.S. allies in the European Union to develop a plan to close the facility, where suspected terrorists are being held. Obama says he wants to close the facility by January of next year, although he faces questions about what to do with the detainees.
“Chancellor Merkel has been very open to discussions with us,” Obama said. “We have not asked her for hard commitments, and she has not given us any hard commitments beyond having a serious discussion … and I don’t anticipate that it’s going to be resolved anytime in the next two or three months.”
Washington has asked Germany to take a dozen prisoners, although Merkel’s interior minister, Wolfgang Schaeuble, has been unenthusiastic about doing so.
Schaeuble said today that the information the United States has offered so far is insufficient for Germany to take detainees.
Schaeuble said after a meeting of state security officials in Bremerhaven that he had to make a decision in the public interest and that means “that we do not lessen the security of the country. It must be assured sufficiently that additional dangers do not arise from taking them in.”
He also argued that prisoners should be able to show some kind of connection to Germany before they are accepted.
Meanwhile, Canada has refused a request from the Obama administration to take 17 Chinese Muslims cleared for release from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo.
Kory Teneycke, a spokesman for Prime Minister Stephen Harper, said today recent inquiries concerning the 17 Uighurs at Guantanamo were rejected.
“Canada is not looking to take any detainees from Guantanamo,” Teneycke told The Associated Press. “In the case of the Uighurs and other Guantanamo Bay detainees, Canada has no interest.”
Teneycke said they have no connection to Canada and there are security concerns.
He said it’s a different situation for Canadian detainee Omar Khadr, who Teneycke said does have standing in Canada because he is a citizen.
Canada, however, is appealing a court ruling requiring it to ask the U.S. to return the last Western detainee to Canada. Harper has steadfastly refused to get involved in Khadr’s case, saying the U.S. legal process has to play itself out.
Khadr is charged with killing an American soldier in Afghanistan.
U.S. authorities no longer consider the Uighurs enemy combatants but have not been able to find a country willing to accept them and have opposed their release into the United States.
Beijing alleges they are terrorists who belong to an outlawed separatist group. China has warned other countries not to accept them and has said they must be returned to China. The U.S. has refused, based on fears they will be tortured in their native country.
Teneycke said China’s warning has nothing to do with Canada’s decision and noted that United States doesn’t want the Guantanamo detainees either.
Canada’s announcement that it won’t take Guantanamo detainees comes a day after President Barack Obama nominated Chicago lawyer and political fundraiser David Jacobson as the new U.S. ambassador to Canada.
Teneycke doesn’t expect Canada’s refusal to hurt relations.
“I think we have a very strong relationship with the United States and with the Obama administration and I anticipate that that relationship will be unaffected by this,” Teneycke said.
Three of the Uighurs applied for political asylum in Canada earlier this year but Canada has previously privately balked at several requests from the Bush administration to take them.
Uighurs are from Xinjiang, an isolated region that borders Afghanistan, Pakistan and six Central Asian nations. They are Turkic-speaking Muslims who say they have long been repressed by the Chinese government. The Uighur detainees were captured in Pakistan and Afghanistan in 2001.
Albania accepted five Uighur detainees in 2006 but since has balked at taking others, partly for fear of diplomatic repercussions from China.
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