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2nd LD Writethru: Obama vows to work with Congress before deciding on using executive order to close Guantanamo

Xinhua, December 19, 2015 Adjust font size:

U.S. President Barack Obama said Friday that he would try to work with the Republican-controlled Congress before saying anything about using the executive authority to close the Guantanamo military prison.

Speaking here at the annual year-end press conference, Obama put the possibility that he would use the executive authority to unilaterally close the Guantanamo prison at rest at least for now, noting that he would first try to persuade the Congress to pass a Pentagon plan which so far had not been submitted to the Congress.

"I'm not going to automatically assume that Congress says no," said Obama before acknowledging that "significant resistance" from the Congress was expected.

"But I think we can make a very strong argument," said Obama. "And we will wait until Congress has said definitively no to a well thought out plan with numbers attached to it before we say anything definitive about my executive authority here."

Also, Obama said he expected the population in the Guantanamo prison to drop to under 100 by early 2016.

"We will continue to steadily chip away at the population," said Obama.

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

Currently, there are 112 detainees still in the Guantanamo detention center, among them 53 are eligible for transfer to other countries. To close the 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.

The White House earlier had suggested that Obama might try to circumvent the Congress if it refuses to give the Pentagon plan the green light. Enditem