Obama Gitmo blunder creates new Bermuda triangulation

The Obama administration's move to transfer Gitmo detainees to Bermuda without apparently informing Britain caused United Kingdom senior officials to react angrily.

After American states overwhelmingly rejected any Gitmo detainee transfers, the Obama administration devised a "Bermuda solution," unleashing the detainees into the British colony. The only problem was they did not inform anybody in the United Kingdom of the decision. In a diplomatic blunder that pushed U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton into an uncomfortable conversation with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, the U.S. appeared to completely ignore one of its most strategic allies. "In an escalating diplomatic row over the transfer of the former terrorist suspects, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton discussed the transfer with British Foreign Secretary David Miliband in what was said to be an uneasy conversation. Privately Whitehall officials accused America of treating Britain, with whom it is supposed to have a "special relationship", with barely disguised contempt," reported The Independent. The U.S. move is highly unusual and provocative. "The Americans were fully aware of the foreign-policy understanding we have with Bermuda and they deliberately chose to ignore it. This is not the kind of behaviour one expects from an ally," a senior British official told The Independent. The U.S. State Department claimed that the Bermuda governor's office had been involved in the negotiations on the detainees release all along, a claim the governor denies. The prime minister of Bermuda, Ewart Brown, said that talks regarding the Uighurs had been going on for a full month, with London kept in the dark about the transfer. "Nothing like this happens overnight. We started these discussions the middle of May," he said. "You can understand that this matter is of such significance and why the talks had to be private and somewhat restricted." Sir Richard Gozney, Bermuda's governor said, "We were only told this morning." The deal allows the detainees to settle in Bermuda and to potentially become U.K citizens - which would allow them to travel freely to the U.K. but not to the United States without permission from the U.S. government. The four freed men are Uighurs - a Turkic ethnic group that promotes separatist activities in China. The U.S. has also claimed that they do not wish to return the men to China for fear they will be tortured and executed. For their part, the Chinese are also angry with the U.S. decision, saying the men are dangerous separatists and that the U.S. has no right to place Chinese citizens in the hands of another country. China plans to discuss the matter further with the U.K.