The White House is set to reverse a key Bush administration policy by allowing some of the 240 remaining Guantánamo Bay inmates to be resettled on American soil.
The US is pushing for Europe to take a share of released inmates, but the Obama administration is reconciled to taking some of them, even though there will be noisy resistance from individual states.
Washington has told European officials that once a review of the Guantánamo cases is completed, the US will almost certainly allow some inmates to resettle on the mainland.
George Bush's refusal to countenance a resettlement programme on US soil contributed to European reluctance to play host to freed prisoners.
Since Barack Obama's election victory, Portugal has offered to accept some of them as a means of hastening the camp's closure, and other governments have indicated they will consider it. Britain argues that it has already done enough by accepting both nationals and former residents.
Some of those to be released can return to their own homelands, but there are many others who cannot, such as the Chinese Uighurs who would face the risk of a death sentence.
A European diplomat said today the change of course in Washington would make it easier to persuade her government to take part in an international resettlement plan. "It changes the whole tone," she said.
The cases of the 240 inmates are being reviewed by a team of experienced US prosecutors to determine whether there is a basis for criminal charges. It remains unresolved what to do if there is a substantial "third category" of detainees who are deemed to pose a security threat, but against whom there is insufficient evidence to file criminal charges either because evidence was obtained under torture or because it is in the form of classified intelligence.
The Obama administration is still contemplating the option of military courts martial, reconstituting the Bush-era military commissions or even instituting some new form of preventive detention.
In a 90-minute interview on CBS tonight, Obama struck back at the former vice-president Dick Cheney over his charge that the new Guantánamo policy was putting US security at risk. The president said his predecessor's policy of indefinite detention was unsustainable and had generated anti-US sentiment without making the country safer.
Obama acknowleged that some detainees released from Guantánamo had returned to terrorist groups but blamed the Bush administration for inadequate screening. "There is no doubt that we have not done a particularly effective job in sorting through who are truly dangerous individuals‚ to make sure [they] are not a threat to us," he said.
During the interview, the president again came to the defence of his treasury secretary, Tim Geithner, over his handling of the millions in dollars in bonuses paid out to executives of the failing insurance giant AIG. Were Geithner to tender his resignation, Obama said, he would tell him: "Sorry, buddy, you've still got the job."
It is the fourth time in a week that Obama has come to Geithner's defence. He said at no point over the last week had the two discussed resignation.