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International Heavy Equipment
QUESTION:Speculation that the US will go ahead with plans to hold suspected
terrorists and prisoners of war on remote Pacific islands intensified
yesterday when US forces began delivering heavy equipment to the
Northern Marianas.
Naval officers on nearby Guam said the delivery to the island of Tinian
would last 10 days.
"That's very unusual," Mark Pangelinan of the Northern Marianas'
emergency management office, told the Saipan
Tribune. "We need to inform the public what's going on."
A US military spokeswoman on Guam said that the C-130 aircraft spotted
unloading equipment on Tinian was practising for the air force's "annual
Christmas drop" of gifts to islands in the region.
But the local press reported that officials had said earlier that they
did not need to unload heavy equipment in preparation for the goodwill
exercise.
Moreover, the US army has asked for additional security measures at
Tinian's international airport.
Senior officials on the Northern Marianas, a commonwealth of 14 islands
administered by the US and dependent on aid from Washington, believe the
US forces may hold suspected terrorists and former Taliban fighters on
land they lease there.
There has been widespread unease in the Pacific since the US authorities
confirmed that its territories in the region would be considered as
sites for holding prisoners of war and conducting military trials.
Several politicians on the Northern Marianas and Guam oppose the use of
their islands as military prisons because they believe it will damage
the economy and the predominantly Japanese tourist trade.
Hotels on the Northern Mariana islands were at their emptiest after the
September 11 terrorist attacks.
But Mr Pangelinan said he would support a US plan to use Tinian to hold
or try captured al-Qaida members.
"Our country is in need of our assistance and we all should cooperate
and put in our share as a United States
commonwealth," he said.
Senators on Guam have introduced a resolution asking George Bush and
Donald Rumsfeld, the US defence secretary, to remove Guam from their
list of potential sites for war tribunals.
President Bush's press secretary, Ari Fleischer, told a White House
briefing last week that no preparations were being made on Guam to hold
military trials there.
US forces have conducted several big exercises on the Northern Marianas
in recent years, and plan to send 5,000 marines to Tinian next March.
Northern Mariana port officials said the US had always informed them of
the nature of its military activities on the islands.
ANSWER: What a bunch of spin this is! Is Ari saying the US in conducting military
exercises there? While we are in a police action? Please! Me thinks he
insults the public's intellegence!
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