Cuba urges US to return Guantanamo Bay base
HAVANA: Foreign Minister Felipe Perez Roque on Wednesday
called for the US naval base in Guantanamo to be returned to Cuba and
said he would invite the UN special investigator on torture to visit the
island.
Perez Roque said that US President Barack Obama's decision to close
within a year the "war on terror" prison at the US naval base in
Guantanamo Bay was positive but insufficient.
Cuba expects that Obama's decision to close down the Guantanamo
prison camp "is followed by the decision to close down the base and
return that territory to the Cubans," a base that the United States
"really does not need for its security and defense," Perez Roque said.
Perez Roque also said that the United Nations' torture investigator,
Manfred Nowak, will be invited next week "so that he can visit our
country during the course of the current year."
Cuba will also ratify "in the next days" the UN international
convention against forced disappearances, Perez Roque said.
"Cuba is a country where over the past 50 years there has not been
... a single person that has gone missing. Nor has anyone been tortured,
nor has there been a single extrajudicial execution," Perez Roque said.
Thursday, AFP
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