BREAKING NEWS

Obama to discuss al-Qaida, drones, Guantanamo Bay

By REUTERS

MAY 19, 2013 18:39

President Barack Obama, under fire for security lapses at a US mission in Libya, will in a speech on Thursday lay out his wide-ranging counter-terrorism policy, from the controversial use of drones to efforts to close the US military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Obama's use of military drone aircraft to attack extremists has drawn fire and increased tensions in countries like Pakistan and been criticized by human rights activists in the United States.

His inability to follow through on a 2008 campaign pledge to close the Guantanamo Bay prison has been dramatized by a hunger strike among many of the terrorism suspects being held there.

And the resurgence in recent weeks of questions surrounding the deaths of US ambassador to Libya Christopher Stevens and three other Americans in an attack on a US facility in Benghazi, Libya, last year has put Obama on the defensive.

In his State of the Union speech early this year Obama pledged to work with Congress to make certain that the US targeting, detention and prosecution of terrorism suspects was consistent with US law.

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