Guantanamo Bay Naval Base | United States Navy, territorial dispute

Cuba / Guantanamo /
 United States Navy, territorial dispute, naval base
Used by the United States Navy for more than a century, and is the oldest overseas U.S. Navy Base. The United States controls the land on both sides of the southern part of Guantánamo Bay (Bahía de Guantánamo in Spanish) under a lease set up in the wake of the 1898 Spanish-American War.

The current Cuban government considers the U.S. presence in Guantánamo to be an illegal occupation of the area, and argues that the Cuban-American Treaty, which established the lease in 1903, now violates article 52 of the 1969 Vienna Convention on the Law of Treaties.

The United States bases its current legal claim on the base to the fact that the Castro regime cashed two annual lease checks shortly after they came to power. The U.S. states that since they cashed the checks, the new regime in essence was signalling it was willing to abide by the original lease agreement. They have not cashed subsequent checks, which are still sent annually.

It is the only United States military installation located in a Communist country.

Since 2001, the naval base has contained a military prison, the Guantanamo Bay detainment camp, for persons alleged to be militant combatants captured in Afghanistan and later in Iraq.


www.globalsecurity.org/military/facility/guantanamo-bay...
Wikipedia article: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guantanamo_Bay_Naval_Base
Nearby cities:
Coordinates:   19°55'55"N   75°9'33"W

Comments

  • I wonder why we need this base anymore. Just sinking more money into a camp we don't own