White House postpones meeting on Guantanamo

WASHINGTON -- The White House postponed a meeting of the administration's top senior foreign and defense policy officials scheduled for today to debate the future of the Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, terrorism detention center, but officials said the issue of whether to close the facility is likely to be discussed again.

The high-level meeting was scheduled to help senior leaders decide whether the Guantanamo prison could be closed and its detainees moved to US prisons without risking their release by the new courts. Plans for the White House meeting were first reported yesterday by The Associated Press.

Following legal defeats and growing criticism at home and abroad, administration officials have begun reconsidering the future of Guantanamo and US detainee policies. Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates has urged that it be closed, and former Secretary of State Colin L. Powell last week called for its shutdown.

But the White House last night denied any decision was at hand, noting that several important issues -- including the repatriation of detainees who have been marked for release and the setting up of new war-crimes tribunals -- have yet to be addressed.

"No decisions on the future of Guantanamo Bay are imminent," said Gordon Johndroe, a White House spokesman. He added that today's meeting "is no longer on the schedule" but that senior officials are expected to take up the issue again.

Earlier this month, two military judges threw out the only two pending war-crimes cases against alleged Al Qaeda and Taliban associates. The judges said neither detainee had been properly classified to stand trial.

The White House is also under increasing congressional pressure to change its policy toward Guantanamo, with several bills under consideration that would force the administration's hand.

Senator Tom Harkin, a Democrat from Iowa, author of one of the bills that would shutter Guantanamo, said he was encouraged by reports that the Bush administration is moving toward closing the facility.

"The right thing to do is to close the Guantanamo Bay prison as expeditiously as possible, while requiring that criminal detainees be transferred to state-of-the-art, maximum-security facilities within the United States," Harkin said in a statement.

Gates has acknowledged in congressional testimony that he has been pushing the administration to close Guantanamo and to move the detainees to US military courts. He testified that the Guantanamo Bay facility's history has given it a "taint" and that war-crimes trials held there would lack international credibility.

Johndroe, the White House spokesman, said that President Bush has "long expressed a desire" to close Guantanamo, but that the president wants to make sure it is done in "a responsible way."

Hundreds of detainees have been held without trial at Guantanamo since the first prisoners arrived in January 2002.