President Obama might be running out of time to fulfill a 2008 campaign promise to close the prison facility at Guantanamo Bay. One thing he’s not in any rush to do, however, is give control of the land that Gitmo sits on back to Cuba.
“We’ve been clear that we’re not at this stage at all interested in changing the nature of our understanding and our arrangements on Guantanamo,” US National Security Advisor Susan Rice told reporters Wednesday.
She was responding to comments made by Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodriguez, who, during a ceremony at the re-opening of the Cuban embassy in Washington on Monday, spoke out against the US footprint in Cuba and the ongoing economic embargo.
“The historic events we are living today will only make sense with the removal of the economic, commercial and financial blockade, which causes so much deprivation and damage to our people, the return of occupied territory in Guantanamo, and respect for the sovereignty of Cuba,” Rodriguez said.
The 45-square-mile patch of land on the island nation was carved out by the United States more than 100 years ago amid Cuba’s fight for independence against Spain. The US claim to the property is based on a treaty that was re-affirmed in 1934 stipulating that the land agreement can only be voided if both nations assent—something the US has been unwilling to do.
On future diplomatic discussion over control of Guantanamo Bay, Rice remarked that Cuban officials, “may choose to raise it, but we’ve been equally clear that for us that’s not in the offering of the president.”
Currently, 116 prisoners remain at the facility—nearly half of them are cleared for transfer or release.
The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the administration was putting pressure on its Defense Secretary Ashton Carter to sign off on a new round of prisoner transfers, and that the Pentagon chief was, according to the paper, “generating mounting concern” at the White House that he may not be up for the task.
White House press secretary Josh Earnest claimed Wednesday that the US “is in the final stages” of drafting a plan to close the military prison facility at Gitmo.
House and Senate Republicans, however, have tried using this year’s National Defense Authorization Act, to further limit the President’s ability to shutter Gitmo.
The legislative maneuvering prompted Earnest on Wednesday to repeat the President’s NDAA veto threat, should the annual defense policy bill include language imposing more stringent rules on detainee transfers.
