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Bush won't rule out closing Gitmo

By wire services
Published June 9, 2005

WASHINGTON - President Bush on Wednesday left open the possibility that the U.S. prison camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, could be shut down following mounting criticism from former President Jimmy Carter and others.

"We're exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America," Bush said when asked if he would close the prison.

Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, however, said he did not know of anyone in the administration who was considering closing Guantanamo. He defended the military's operation of the camp.

The military provides "a stable and secure and safe environment," he said. "Information gained from detainees there has saved the lives of people from our country and from other countries."

The Pentagon disclosed last week that U.S. guards or interrogators at Guantanamo kicked and stepped on the Koran.

Carter told a human rights conference Tuesday that closing the prison would demonstrate the U.S. commitment to human rights when the U.S. reputation has suffered globally because of reports of prisoner abuses at Guantanamo as well as in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Amnesty International also has called for Guantanamo's closure.

Bush said the Guantanamo Bay detainees are being treated in accordance with international standards and that any allegations of mistreatment are fully investigated. He defended the policy of holding enemy combatants.

"It's in our nation's interest that we learn a lot about those people that are still in detention, because we're still trying to find out how to better protect our country," he said. "What we don't want to do is let somebody out that comes back and harms us."

JERUSALEM - The militant Palestinian Islamic Jihad on Wednesday presented pictures of torn copies of the Islamic holy book, the Koran, and said that they were taken inside an Israeli prison and that soldiers were responsible for the desecration. Israel denied the charge and said the pictures were a fabrication.

The Palestinian Islamic Jihad transmitted the pictures by e-mail to a reporter in the West Bank. They show two Korans with torn pages. The militants said prisoners took the pictures with cellular telephones and sent them electronically to militant leaders.

The militants said Wednesday that soldiers desecrated six or seven Korans as they searched Palestinian prisoners' cells at the Megiddo jail in northern Israel early Tuesday. The prisoners were outside the cells but saw what was going on, the militants said.

LONDON - A nearly 500-year-old map from the first set to identify the New World as "America" and depict the Pacific Ocean was sold Wednesday for a record$1-million, an auction house said.

The printed map, one of four known surviving examples produced by a group working under German cartographer Martin Waldseemueller, was bought by Charles Frodsham and Co. Ltd., a company that makes, collects and deals in items ranging from clocks to maps and books, Christie's auction house said.

Christie's said the price - $880,000 plus auctioneer's premium - was the most ever paid for a single-sheet map at an auction. The auction house had said it expected the map to fetch from $900,000 to $1.46-million.

Scholars created the set of maps based on explorers' accounts and had to draw the Pacific Ocean before Europeans had discovered it. The work depicts a land mass labeled "America" that corresponds to part of South America.

[Last modified June 9, 2005, 01:18:46]