Australia unlikely to accept Guantanamo detainees

[January 02, 2009]  CANBERRA, Australia (AP) -- Australia will likely reject a U.S. request to accept detainees freed from the Guantanamo Bay military prison, the acting prime minister said Friday.

Julia Gillard said U.S. President George W. Bush's administration made the request in early December after President-elect Barack Obama announced he planned to close the prison. Obama has not made such a request, she said.

Australia had rejected a similar request to resettle "a small group of detainees" in early 2008, said Gillard, who is filling in for Prime Minister Kevin Rudd while he is on vacation.

"Australia, as an ally of the United States, is examining this second request," Gillard said in a statement. "Notwithstanding that, it is unlikely Australia would accept these detainees."

The rebuff from Australia -- a staunch ally in the U.S.-led war on terror -- was a blow to Washington's quest to find homes in other countries for the prisoners, Australian National University political scientist Michael McKinley said.

But he said a request from Obama himself could yet be successful, as Rudd attempts to endear himself to the new administration by helping it politically.

"Rudd could be hoping to win some points with the new administration through this," McKinley said.

Rudd's center-left Labor Party, which came to power in 2007, has criticized the detention camp at the Guantanamo Bay naval base in Cuba as unjust and demanded the repatriation of two Australians held there.

David Hicks, who was held at Guantanamo for 5 1/2 years without trial, was sent back in 2007 after pleading guilty to supporting terrorism as a Taliban soldier in Afghanistan. He served a nine-month sentence in Australia. Mamdouh Habib, an Egyptian-born immigrant who was arrested in Pakistan in 2001, was returned to Australia in 2005. No charges were ever filed against him.

Habib said Friday that Australia should not accept the detainees because their histories were unknown.

"It is a big risk to the country to bring (these) people here," he told Network Nine television news in Sydney.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has called for proposals for transferring the remaining 250 or so detainees -- amid concerns that some could be persecuted if sent back to their home nations.

Most come from Yemen, but others are from Azerbaijan, Algeria, Afghanistan, Chad, China and Saudi Arabia.

Some have been held without charge since the prison camp opened in 2002 to hold so-called "enemy combatants" accused of having links to the al-Qaida terror network or Afghanistan's ousted Taliban regime.

Many European nations -- which had long been loath to accept detainees from the prison -- more recently indicated a willingness to resettle inmates.

Officials from France, Germany, Portugal and Switzerland have all said they are looking into accepting detainees from the U.S. prison.

Australia's opposition leader, Malcolm Turnbull, said the country should not accept any of the Guantanamo detainees, saying there are many other people already seeking to enter the country.

"It would be difficult to imagine the circumstances in which any claims on humanitarian grounds should take priority over the many applicants for humanitarian entry currently awaiting approval," he added.

[Associated Press; By ROD McGUIRK]

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