EU nations may take freed Gitmo inmates off Obama's hands

WASHINGTON, Dec. 23 (UPI) -- U.S. President-elect Barack Obama's honeymoon period has crossed the Atlantic: European nations are planning on holding a conference next month to discuss resettling freed terror suspects who are currently held at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

A German diplomat in Washington told The Washington Times that his country was prepared to take responsibility for absorbing some terrorist suspects once Obama fulfills his campaign pledge to close the controversial detention facility that the Bush administration has operated at Guantanamo.

Ulrich A. Sante, press counselor at the German Embassy in Washington, said representatives from European nations would meet in January to discuss what roles they would each play to cooperate with the Obama administration once Guantanamo was closed.

"We have always supported any policy that went toward closing Guantanamo," Sante added.

Germany is not the only EU nation signaling its readiness to cooperate with Obama on holding terror suspects after Guantanamo closes. The Washington Times also reported that Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado sent a letter to all other 26 EU governments urging them to cooperate and act on the issue.

Sante also said German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier had already initiated action in his ministry's legal department to "clear all issues regarding the detainees so we will be prepared" to house some prisoners released from Guantanamo.

"The German government's opinion is that the closure (of Guantanamo) should not be made impossible because of the question of inmates who are innocent but cannot be reintegrated into their countries of origin," Sante said, according to the report.

The Washington Times said around 250 prisoners remain in Guantanamo, and 60 of them have been approved to be freed by U.S. authorities.

There is no doubt that the closing of Guantanamo will be a very popular policy with the American and European public alike. But it will leave a lot of problems and unanswered questions after the good feelings fade.

First, what will happen to those terror suspects who have not been cleared of suspicion of wrongdoing? Guantanamo still has plenty of those.

It is likely that the European governments will not want to grasp the hot potato of taking responsibility for keeping them behind bars. Would they then be moved to domestic civilian U.S. jails and be prosecuted through the U.S. legal system? Obama has indicated he would prefer to deal with them this way.

Even if EU countries agreed to jail some of the Guantanamo detainees, the U.S. government would have to relinquish its power to hold terror suspects when it hands them over to other countries.

And even if European countries agreed to hold any of the Guantanamo suspects, that might inspire Islamist terrorists to carry out terror attacks or seize hostages in countries such as Germany or Portugal precisely because they may appear to be softer targets and easier marks than the United States.

Extreme Islamist groups also may find it easier to organize terror attacks or the seizure of hostages in Europe than in the United States.

Finally, the security services of the main European nations are already stretched to the limit monitoring Islamist extremists among their own very large Muslim minority communities. The danger exists that a number of hardened Islamist guerrillas and cell organizers will slip through the net and be able to provide experienced, serious organization and leadership to groups plotting future atrocities in their new host countries.

Nevertheless, the very public messages from Germany and Portugal signaling their willingness to accept freed Guantanamo inmates and to cooperate on holding those still regarded as security threats have given Obama a dramatic diplomatic victory that repeatedly eluded President George W. Bush.

The statements from Germany and Portugal therefore mark a significant shift in U.S.-European relations at a very practical level.

There is no question that the operation of the Guantanamo holding facility has seriously damaged U.S. standing around the world over the past few years. But it is also clear that Guantanamo played a thankless but crucial role in allowing U.S. authorities and armed forces to hold terror suspects en masse and gather crucial information from them.

For all the well-documented abuses and mistakes in holding innocent men, the Guantanamo system fulfilled its primary purpose in helping to prevent any more terror attacks like Sept. 11, 2001, on the U.S. mainland.

We may miss it when it's gone.