Abu Ghraib demolition plan 'a waste'

President George Bush’s idea of demolishing the notorious Abu Ghraib prison would be a waste of resources, the head of Iraq’s Governing Council said today.

“We must not be sentimental,” Ghazi Mashal Ajil al-Yawer said in Baghdad.

“Torture has taken place in every vault in Iraq. As the Governing Council, we do not agree with demolishing it and the matter will be left for the transitional government.”

The transitional government is due to take office on January 30.

Al-Yawer called the idea of destroying the prison “a waste of resources”.

Bush has said the prison will be destroyed “as a fitting symbol of Iraq’s new beginning”.

However, the idea has found little resonance in Iraq.

Ahmed Hassan al-Uqaili, deputy chief of the Human Rights Organisation in Iraq, dismissed Bush’s promise as a Republican ploy “to win the (presidential) election in the United States”.

Al-Uqaili said the most important thing was to end the abuses committed by both Saddam’s regime and the US guards.

Interior Minister Samir Shaker Mahmoud al-Sumeidi said he understood Bush’s desire to “remove the memory and the stain” of the prisoner abuse scandal.

But he said it would be better not tear it down but change the way it is managed.