SYDNEY: The United States has made a new request for Australia to accept a group of detainees from Guantanamo Bay for resettlement, a government spokeswoman said on Saturday. The request is the first by President Barack Obama's administration, which plans to close down the detention camp in Cuba within the next year. Media reports have said the request involves a group of Uighurs from China's largely Muslim western province of Xinjiang. Beijing has reportedly been pressing Washington to return them to China, but U.S. officials have expressed concerns about their likely treatment there.Earlier requests for resettlement in Australia late last year by former president George W. Bush's administration we returned down by Canberra in January on "national security and immigration" grounds. A spokeswoman for Australian Foreign Minister Stephen Smith confirmed the new request had been received. "The Australian government will consider this request on a case by case basis and in accordance with the government's strict immigration and national security requirements," the spokeswoman said.
BAGHDAD: Nearly 500 U.S. Army combat engineers who specialize in clearing roads of explosives started shifting to southern Afghanistan."We are probably going to be the beginning of the influx you are going to see to Afghanistan," Lt. Col. Kevin Landers, commander of the Fort Carson, Colo.-based 4th Engineer Battalion, said as crews packed crates and cleaned vehicles for the flight to Kandahar.Obama has ordered 17,000 more U.S. soldiers and Marines to Afghanistan to bolster the 38,000 American troops already battling the resurgent Taliban."We are going to take this footprint out of Iraq," said Landers, whose battalion received word of its reassignment last month just after taking command of clearing roads in Baghdad of bombs and debris.
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