Shut Guantanamo, say Democrats

NEW YORK - Senior Democrats are calling for the closure of America's detention centre in Guantanamo, Cuba, saying that it has become a "propaganda and recruitment tool" for terrorists following continued allegations of prisoner abuse.

A leading Democrat Senator, Joseph Biden, of Delaware, suggested yesterday that the time had come to consider a gradual closure of the facility, arguing that its worsening reputation around the world was helping to recruit people bent on hurting the United States.

"This has become the greatest propaganda tool that exists for recruiting of terrorists around the world. And it is unnecessary to be in that position," he told ABC television.

For a start, the Senator argued, there should at least be an independent commission established to address the value of keeping Guantanamo. "The end result is, I think we should end up shutting it down, moving those prisoners," he added. "Those that we have reason to keep, keep. And those we don't, let go."

The White House spent the weekend trying to downplay a Pentagon report confirming instances of abuse of the Koran, the Islamic holy book, at the camp in Guantanamo, chastising the media and placing the blame on a few rogue US guards acting in disregard of American policy.

The latest furore comes just two weeks after the Bush Administration assailed Newsweek magazine for suggesting that guards had flushed a copy of the Koran down the lavatory. The magazine withdrew the claim, saying it was unsure of its sources, but not before it had triggered deadly anti-American rioting in Afghanistan and other Muslim countries.

But on Saturday the Pentagon concluded that there had indeed been some scattered cases where the Koran had been desecrated in the facility, though none flushed in a lavatory.

In one case, urine from a guard had splashed on the Koran. Also recorded were cases where the books had been kicked or stamped on by guards and interrogators or made wet when guards threw water balloons into cells.

The revelation triggered a familiar White House response. Blaming lower-ranking American soldiers was also the strategy at the outbreak of the abuse scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq.

"It is unfortunate that some have chosen to take out of context a few isolated incidents by a few individuals," presidential spokesman Scott McClellan said in a statement from President George W. Bush's ranch in Crawford, Texas.

He noted that the report said that there were in fact more cases of the book being desecrated by inmates than by guards. (Although why that should be was not explained.)

Conditions at Guantanamo, where terror suspects are held without charge and without access to legal representation, are becoming a public relations nightmare for the White House. Last week, Amnesty International likened the high-security facility to a gulag, prompting a swift response from President Bush. He called the characterisation "absurd".

- INDEPENDENT