More Indications Obama Bought off Palau with Increased Economic Aid

From the AP:

A group of Guantanamo detainees expected to be resettled in Palau may not want to move to the remote Pacific nation, a Palauan official said Wednesday.

Last weekend, Palau sent a fact-finding team to the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba to meet with the 13 Uighurs — Turkic Muslims from China's far western Xinjiang region — and assess their needs.

The Uighurs appear reluctant to temporarily resettle in Palau, said Joshua Koshiba, who leads a committee on U.S.-Palau relations. He has been in contact with the team since their trip.

Possibly only one Uighur wants to move to Palau, he said, without providing details of the discussions.

"You and me, we thought this was between the U.S. and Palau," Koshiba said. "But they have their own lawyers, and they have rights."

Koshiba leads a committee negotiating the ongoing Compact of Free Association [aka, the economic aid package] between the U.S. and Palau.

The four-member fact-finding team, sent by the committee, had initially traveled to Washington as part of talks to renew that agreement, which governs U.S.-Palau relations. They detoured to Cuba after Palau agreed last week to President Barack Obama's request to take the men as part of plans to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center.

Apparently, the country of Palau ain't good enough for the 13 remaining Uighurs who would prefer to join their buddies in the tropical island of Bermuda. But of course, when you're staying in a high class resort like Gitmo, why settle for a dinky little island like Palau?

Nevertheless, it should also be noted as follows:

The fact-finding team from Palau which met with the 13 Uighurs in Gitmo, were originally part of the committee which traveled to Washington to negotiate Palau's economic aid package. As part of the ensuing [economic] negotiations, or after the negotiations had ended, they were then sent by the committee on a fact-finding mission to Gitmo where they met with the Uighurs to "assess their needs".

Which seems to suggest - contrary to the State Department's statement on the matter - what many have been saying all along: That Paula agreed to accept the Uighurs only after the Obama administration had bought it off with a hefty economic-aid package, exceeding - according to some reports - $200 million.

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