The Obama administration made all sorts of promises to countries that contemplated accepting prisoners from Guantanamo Bay, today’s New York Times reports. Readers will remember from yesterday’s post that the administration offered Slovenia a meeting with the president in exchange for accepting a prisoner. The deal never happened. Further scrutinizing the cables released by WikiLeaks, the Times lists more of the bargains the administration proposed:

The Maldives tied acceptance of prisoners to American help in obtaining International Monetary Fund assistance, while the Bush administration offered the Pacific nation of Kiribati “an incentive package” of $3 million to take 17 Chinese Muslim detainees, the cables show. In discussions about creating a rehabilitation program for its own citizens, the president of Yemen repeatedly asked Mr. Brennan, “How many dollars will the U.S. bring?” . . .
In the fall of 2009, Lithuania’s newly elected president backed out of her country’s previous agreement to resettle a prisoner amid an uproar over reports that the Central Intelligence Agency had run a secret jail in Lithuania. The chairman of the Lithuanian Parliament’s national security committee privately apologized and suggested using mutual allies to pressure her to reconsider, the cables show.

China was less than helpful in resettling the Uighurs, Muslims from its restive Xinjiang province:

And an aide to Finland’s prime minister confided in August 2009 “that Chinese diplomats in Helsinki have repeatedly warned them about the damage to bilateral relations should Finland accept any Uighurs,” a cable said.

But Albania was a steadfast ally:

Still, a few allies were eager to help. After accepting five Chinese Muslims in 2006, Albania’s prime minister in 2009 offered to resettle three to six detainees not from China. American diplomats portrayed his offer as “gracious, but probably extravagant.”
“As always, the Albanians are willing to go the extra mile to assist with one of our key foreign policy priorities,” a cable said.

Who knew? Jay did.