Spotlight: Obama to sign defense policy bill despite hindrance to Guantanamo closure

The White House said on Tuesday U.S. President Barack Obama would sign an annual defense policy bill even if it keeps in place a ban on transferring detainees from the Guantanamo Bay military prison to the United States.

Speaking at a daily briefing, White House spokesman Josh Earnest said though Obama believes the closure of the Guantanamo detention center "is a national security priority," Obama would still sign the 607-billion-U.S.-dollar National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) passed overwhelmingly in the Senate on Tuesday.

"There are a number of provisions in the (NDAA) that are important to running and protecting the country," said Earnest. "That's why I would expect you will see the president sign the NDAA when it comes to his desk."

Obama vetoed the original NDAA bill on Oct. 22.

Though concerns about Congress's continued objection to the Guantanamo plan were mentioned in Obama's veto decision, it was the maneuver by the Republican-controlled Congress to put an extra 38 billion dollar in war funding account to skirt spending caps that prompted the rare veto of the annual defense policy bill.

As the end of Obama's presidency is looming, the prospect of closing Guantanamo detention center, a campaign promise made by Obama in 2008, becomes dim.

After months of delay, the Pentagon was expected to send the Congress sometime this week its long-stalled closure plan of the Guantanamo detention center.

According to previous media reports which cited sources familiar with the plan, the Pentagon would provide U.S. lawmakers with possible domestic prison sites for housing Guantanamo detainees whom the Pentagon regards as too dangerous to be transferred safely to other countries.

Currently, there are 112 detainees still in the Guantanamo detention center, among whom 53 are eligible for transfer to other countries. To close the detention center, the Obama administration had long sought to bring the rest of the prison population to a facility in the United States but to no avail.

Under the current U.S. law, without the consent of the Congress, the White House is banned from spending money on moving detainees to U.S. homeland.

The expected Pentagon plan would represent a last-gasp effort by the Obama administration to convince opponents in the Congress to allow transfer to the U.S. soil of dozens of Guantanamo detainees, who were captured and detained without trials during the U.S. counter-terrorism campaign after the 9/11 terrorist attacks.

If the Pentagon plan is rejected by the Congress, another alternative for Obama would be resorting to his executive authority to unilaterally close the detention center.

Earnest suggested on Wednesday in the daily briefing that Obama might try to circumvent the Congress if it refuses to give the Pentagon plan the green light.

"At this point, I would not take anything off the table in terms of the president doing everything that he can to achieve this critically important national security objective," said Earnest, when asked whether Obama would act unilaterally.

Meanwhile, the Pentagon on Tuesday welcomed the new NDAA bill, and insisted its continued commitment with the White House to closing Guantanamo.

Calling part of the NDAA bill "problematic," Pentagon spokesman Peter Cook said the language in the bill that hampers the closure of the Guantanamo prison would not "deter the (defense) department from moving forward."

However, in a rare departure from the stance of Obama, U.S. defense chief Ash Carter in September called the push by the White House to close the Guantanamo prison "tricky" and said that he was fine "if they(some detainees) are detained at Guantanamo."

"It would be a nice thing to do and an important thing to do, if we can do it," Carter told U.S. military service members globally via video. "But we gotta be realistic about the people who are in Guantanamo Bay." Endit