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AFP. 19 January 2002. British MPs put pressure on US, govt over Cuba prisoners. LONDON -- British members of parliament Saturday called for a meeting with the US ambassador and urged the government to make a clear statement in response to growing concerns about the treatment of al-Qaeda suspects, including three Britons, held at an US detention centre in Cuba. The cross-party Parliamentary Human Rights Committee said it was lobbying for a meeting with US ambassador to London William Farish over fears that the 110 detainees held at Camp X-Ray, Guantanamo Bay, are being kept in inhumane conditions. The makeshift outdoor facility houses single cells, each with a concrete floor, wooden roof and chain-link walls. The United States says the detainees are illegal combatants, not prisoners of war, and thus do not have rights under the Geneva Convention of 1949, which sets out the laws of war. Ann Clwyd, chairperson for the committee and a member of the ruling Labour party, said it was "playing with words" to suggest that the detainees were not prisoners of war. Clwyd said the purpose of meeting Farish was to "to voice concern about the treatment of all the people taken prisoner in Afghanistan, not just the ones being held in Cuba, and we want an acceptance that they are prisoners of war." She added that there was "substantial concern" among Labour members and called for a government statement on the situation. "It's time we had a clear statement on the position of the prisoners and what the British role now is. We fought the war shoulder to shoulder, now it seems that we are being frozen out of the aftermath. "It's time we became much firmer with the Americans and insisted on the human rights we are all signed up to." The government has sent a team of officials to the camp to assess the conditions of the British prisoners. Newspaper reports here Saturday said that it had also sent intelligence agents to interrogate the detainees, something the Foreign Office refused to comment on. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Barry Stoller http://groups.yahoo.com/group/ProletarianNews ==^================================================================ This email was sent to: archive@jab.org EASY UNSUBSCRIBE click here: http://topica.com/u/?a84x2u.a9WB2D Or send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] T O P I C A -- Register now to manage your mail! http://www.topica.com/partner/tag02/register ==^================================================================
