(ECA178): Guantanamo playing key role in US relief effort (Feature)

By Mike McCarthy Jan 20, 2010, 18:38 GMT

Guantanamo Bay, Cuba - The US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay, notorious for hosting the prison holding suspects in the war on terrorism, is playing a key role in the American operation airlifting humanitarian supplies to Haiti.

The base on the remote southeastern Cuban coast has served since last week as the staging point for flying in food, water, medicine and other goods since last week's magnitude 7.0 earthquake devastated the impoverished Caribbean nation.

Tens of thousands are believed to have perished, and many more have been injured or are without basic necessities.

The international controversy surrounding the prison aside, Guantanamo is usually a quiet place, kind of like a sleepy suburb. But since the January 12 earthquake, the base has been thrumming with activity as supplies and personnel are ferried to Haiti.

Helicopters and planes are buzzing the skies over the base as they take off and land on an airstrip adjacent to the ocean. The base has also served as a hub for many of the American evacuees before they head back to the United States, and a handful of other nationalities. The Spanish ambassador in Port-au-Prince who was injured in the quake was brought here last week for medical attention.

The US military has been leasing the arid land on which Guantanamo rests since the early part of the last century, well before Fidel Castro's revolution turned Cuba into a communist country and US enemy.

Castro has demanded an end to the US presence, but the Americans refuse, arguing that a decision to terminate must be mutual.

Throughout the Cold War, tension here was high. The fence line that separates the two sides could have been described as the western hemisphere's Berlin Wall. US Marines guarded the base's perimeter and their Cuban counterparts to this day keep a watchful eye from observation towers a couple hundred metres away.

The continuing presence of 200 prisoners in the Guantanamo Bay prison has frustrated US President Barack Obama's intention to shut it down - a campaign promise in the 2008 elections that he acted on just two days after his inauguration with an order for it to be closed by January 22.

His directive was welcomed worldwide after years of allegations the prison violated civil rights of terrorist suspects held without charges or trials. Obama said repeatedly during his election campaign that Guantanamo tarnished US credibility and vowed to shut it down.

But as the January 22 deadline approaches, Obama acknowledged the goal will not be met, with officials conceding that closing the facility on the US naval installation in Cuba has proven more challenging than believed.

Since Obama took office, his administration has been able to send more than 40 to other countries, but the pace has been slow and many nations are reluctant to take more.

In trying to close Guantanamo, the Obama administration has had to resolve a broad array of legal, diplomatic and political complexities while coping with sharp criticism from conservatives and opposite- minded civil rights groups.

A task force headed by the Justice Department has spent the year evaluating the cases, trying to determine which detainees can be prosecuted; which can be released to another country; and which fall into a controversial third group: too dangerous for release but cannot be tried. A senior administration official has said none have so far been identified as belonging in that controversial third category.

The Pentagon has so far identified more than 100 detainees as eligible for release, but only a handful of countries have been willing to resettle the prisoners, and when they do it's only in very limited numbers.

Further complicating the problem was the December 25 al-Qaeda bomb plot on a US airliner. The Nigerian suspect has reportedly told US authorities that he received training in Yemen, which has emerged as a new base for al-Qaeda operations. About half the remaining population at Guantanamo is Yemeni.