EU To Press Bush On Guantanamo, CIA Flights

June 20, 2006 -- The European Union will press U.S. President George W. Bush over the U.S. military's detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, and CIA rendition flights at a Vienna summit beginning on June 21.

Austrian Chancellor Wolfgang Schuessel made the announcement at the European Parliament in Brussels today. Austria currently holds the EU's rotating Presidency.

Earlier today, Amnesty International called on EU leaders to make clear their opposition to secret detentions and transfers of terrorist suspects, and to press for the closure of the Guantanamo detention center at the summit.

Hundreds of detainees have been held at Guantanamo without charge and access to lawyers following the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., and the U.S.-led toppling of the Taliban regime later that year in Afghanistan.

(AFP, dpa)