Help With Gitmo: France Will Take a Detainee

Swamp: "I believe democracy makes it incumbent upon heads of state to speak the truth and to live up to what they say,'' French President Nicolas Sarkozy said today in a brief press conference with President Barack Obama - with the French leader managing to take a shot at the American saga of Guantanamo while offering help in fixing it.

"I am a longstanding friend of the United States,'' Sarkozy said. "But Guantanamo was not in keeping with U.S. values-- at least with my perception of what American values were and are. And I was proud and happy that the United States should have taken the decision that we were hoping for, which was to close down that base. We all were, here in Europe....

"You don't combat terrorists with terrorist methods,'' he said. "You combat them with the methods and the weapons of democracy.

"Having said that -- and I have said that -- if then the president of the United States says, 'I'm going to close down Guantanamo, but I need my allies to take -- in this particular instance, this one person -- into our prisons, because this is going to help me, the U.S. president, to shut down this base,' if we are consistent, then we say, yes.

"We can't condemn the United States to have this camp and then simply wash our hands of the whole business when they close it down,'' he said.

That's not all the two talked about today at Palais Rohan in Strasbourg, on the eve of a summit marking the 60th anniversary of NATO.

"We have a hell of a lot of work ahead of us, because there's a hell of a lot of problems we need to deal with,'' Sarkozy said.