Australia will likely reject a US request to accept detainees freed from the Guantanamo Bay military prison, the acting prime minister said yesterday.
Acting Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard said US President George W. Bush's administration made the request early last month after US 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” early last year, said Gillard, who is filling in for Australian 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 US-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 five 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 yesterday that Australia should not accept the detainees because their histories were unknown.
Rainfall is expected to become more widespread and persistent across central and southern Taiwan over the next few days, with the effects of the weather patterns becoming most prominent between last night and tomorrow, the Central Weather Administration (CWA) said yesterday. Independent meteorologist Daniel Wu (吳德榮) said that based on the latest forecast models of the combination of a low-pressure system and southwesterly winds, rainfall and flooding are expected to continue in central and southern Taiwan from today to Sunday. The CWA also warned of flash floods, thunder and lightning, and strong gusts in these areas, as well as landslides and fallen
WAITING GAME: The US has so far only offered a ‘best rate tariff,’ which officials assume is about 15 percent, the same as Japan, a person familiar with the matter said Taiwan and the US have completed “technical consultations” regarding tariffs and a finalized rate is expected to be released soon, Executive Yuan spokeswoman Michelle Lee (李慧芝) told a news conference yesterday, as a 90-day pause on US President Donald Trump’s “reciprocal” tariffs is set to expire today. The two countries have reached a “certain degree of consensus” on issues such as tariffs, nontariff trade barriers, trade facilitation, supply chain resilience and economic security, Lee said. They also discussed opportunities for cooperation, investment and procurement, she said. A joint statement is still being negotiated and would be released once the US government has made
SOUTH CHINA SEA? The Philippine president spoke of adding more classrooms and power plants, while skipping tensions with China over disputed areas Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos Jr yesterday blasted “useless and crumbling” flood control projects in a state of the nation address that focused on domestic issues after a months-long feud with his vice president. Addressing a joint session of congress after days of rain that left at least 31 dead, Marcos repeated his recent warning that the nation faced a climate change-driven “new normal,” while pledging to investigate publicly funded projects that had failed. “Let’s not pretend, the people know that these projects can breed corruption. Kickbacks ... for the boys,” he said, citing houses that were “swept away” by the floods. “Someone has
‘CRUDE’: The potential countermeasure is in response to South Africa renaming Taiwan’s representative offices and the insistence that it move out of Pretoria Taiwan is considering banning exports of semiconductors to South Africa after the latter unilaterally downgraded and changed the names of Taiwan’s two representative offices, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MOFA) said yesterday. On Monday last week, the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation unilaterally released a statement saying that, as of April 1, the Taipei Liaison Offices in Pretoria and Cape Town had been renamed the “Taipei Commercial Office in Johannesburg” and the “Taipei Commercial Office in Cape Town.” Citing UN General Assembly Resolution 2758, it said that South Africa “recognizes the People’s Republic of China (PRC) as the sole
RSS