Palau agrees to take Chinese Uighur Gitmo detainees

The tiny Pacific island nation of Palau has agreed to temporarily resettle up to 17 Chinese Uighur detainees from the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay, President Johnson Toribiong has said.

The president said in a statement seen by AFP on Wednesday he had "agreed to accommodate the United States of America's request to temporarily resettle in Palau up to 17 ethnic Uighur detainees."

"I am honoured and proud that the United States has asked Palau to assist with such a critical task," he said.

Toribiong said Palau officials would travel to review the situation at the Guantanamo Bay facility, which US President Barack Obama wants to close.

The Palau president said he met last week on the island with US special envoy Dan Fried and his delegation over the resettlement of the detainees.

Toribiong said the decision was "a humanitarian gesture intended to help them be freed from any further unnecessary incarceration and to restart their lives anew in as normal fashion as possible."

"These detainees have been approved for release from incarceration because a final determination has been made that they are no longer considered enemy combatants," he said.

Providing the detainees with temporary resettlement would not pose any security problems for the former UN Trust Territory, which was under US administration until becoming independent in 1994.

On Tuesday, a senior US official told AFP on condition of anonymity that neither Palau nor the United States had made a decision concerning the Uighurs.

Cleared but stucked in Gitmo

Four years ago, US authorities cleared the Uighurs, but they have been stuck at the US-run prison in Cuba due to fears that Beijing would torture them if they returned to their homeland in northwestern China's Xinjiang region.

Xinjiang, a vast area that borders Central Asia, has about 8.3 million Uighurs, and many members of the mainly Muslim minority say they have for decades suffered under Chinese political and religious persecution.

Palau, which has a population of about 21,000, is one of six Pacific island nations which gives formal diplomatic recognition to Taiwan rather than China.

In October 2008, a federal judge had ordered the Uighurs released in the United States, but that ruling was overturned on appeal in February.

The Uighur detainees have been in limbo since the Obama administration asked the US Supreme Court to reject a request by the Uighurs to be released on US soil.

The White House contends that the decision whether to allow aliens to enter the United States rests solely with the political branches of government.

Only two out of the Guantanamo Bay facility's roughly 240 detainees have been able to leave the camp since January because of the difficulty in finding third countries to take them in.

Obama has promised to close down the detention center by January 2010, and hopes to convince other countries to take in some of the 50 detainees cleared for release.