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EU's Patten Says U.S. Treatment Of Afghan Prisoners Could "Lose The Peace"
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| EU Commissioner warns U.S. of losing peace over treatment of Afghan POWs |
TOKYO, Jan. 23 (News Agencies) - European Union Commissioner, Chris Patten, criticized Wednesday the U.S. treatment of suspected members of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda network being held at the Guantanamo detention facility in Cuba, news agencies reported.
"We seem to have won the military campaign in Afghanistan," Patten said, "but having won the campaign, I think it would be a huge error if the international coalition was to lose the peace."
He was responding to a question about his view of Washington's classification of the 110 captives as illegal combatants, not prisoners of war, effectively denying them rights under the 1949 Geneva Convention on the laws of war and provoking severe international concerns over their treatment.
The E.U. had steadfastly supported the U.S.-led military campaign against Afghanistan and "sympathized massively" with the U.S. after the September 11 terrorist attacks, blamed on Osama bin Laden, Patten said.
But the international coalition's values, he added, were "the rule of law and international law, fairness, decency, justice and not revenge."
"I do not doubt it is extremely difficult to apply these principles in dealing with the most dangerous men," Agence France-Presse (AFP) quoted Patten as saying. "But one should try, and if we are not seen to be trying, I think there is a danger that we will lose our moral high ground, and in that case, we run the risk of starting to lose public opinion."
Patten, a British national, was in Japan to attend the two-day international donor conference for Afghanistan's reconstruction which ended Tuesday, January 22, with pledges of 4.5 billion dollars in aid over five years.
Vexation about the U.S. treatment of Afghan POWs has been raised by photographs showing a group of the prisoners kneeling, handcuffed and wearing dark goggles, earmuffs, mittens and bright orange jumpsuits.
Switzerland added its voice Wednesday to mounting criticism of the conditions of those Afghan detainees in the U.S. Guantanamo base in Cuba, saying they must be considered prisoners of war under the Geneva Conventions.
Foreign affairs secretary, Franz Von Daeniken, explained the Swiss position in talks with the U.S. ambassador to Switzerland, Mercer Reynolds, in a statement issued by the foreign ministry, AFP said.
Under article 5 of the 1949 Third Geneva Convention, the status, transfer to the naval base at Guantanamo and detention of the captives have become an issue of international law and notably of human rights, the ministry said.
"Like the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC) and the U.N. High Commissioner for Human Rights, Switzerland believes that the people detained at Guantanamo must benefit from the status of prisoner of war, at least momentarily," the ministry added.
Swiss officials have insisted since U.S. forces began attacking Taliban and Al-Qaeda positions in Afghanistan in October 2001, that the fight against international terrorism must respect international law.
Washington has classified the Guantanamo captives as illegal combatants, not prisoners of war, effectively denying them rights under the Geneva Convention on the laws of war, provoking severe international concerns over their treatment.
U.S. Defense Secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, angrily denied Tuesday, January 22, that prisoners transported from Afghanistan to the U.S. military foothold in Cuba were being ill-treated or subjected to torture.
"The treatment of the detainees in Guantanamo Bay is proper, it's humane, it's appropriate, and it is fully consistent with international conventions," Rumsfeld told a Pentagon news conference.
He defended the classification of the detainees as "unlawful combatants," rather than as prisoners of war with certain rights under the Geneva Convention.
E.U. foreign policy chief, Javier Solana, sees no difference as to whether or not the detainees be regarded as POWs. He said Monday, January 21, that the fact that Washington has linked the prisoners to the September 11 terror attacks that killed more than 3,000 people should make no difference.
Article 5 of the Geneva Convention on the treatment of prisoners of war stipulates that if there is "any doubt ... as to whether persons, having committed a belligerent act and having fallen into the hands of the enemy, belong to any of the categories enumerated in Article 4, such persons shall enjoy the protection of the present Convention until such time as their status has been determined by a competent tribunal."
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