Bush considers Guantanamo alternatives

WASHINGTON - President Bush has left the door open to an eventual closing of the US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay amid mounting complaints and calls for it to be shut down, including a broadside from former president and human rights champion Jimmy Carter.

"We're exploring all alternatives as to how best to do the main objective, which is to protect America. What we don't want to do is let somebody out that comes back and harms us," Bush said in an interview with Fox News Channel when asked whether it should be shut down.

Calls for closure of the prison camp for foreign terrorism suspects at Guatanamo Bay, Cuba have risen over the past few days after Amnesty International set off a furor last month by calling it a "gulag" and comparing it to the brutal Soviet system of forced labour camps in which millions died.

Amnesty's secretary general, Irene Khan, said in a statement issued in London that she had noted Bush's comment "with interest" and urged him "to close the prison and charge the detainees under US law in US courts or release them, as this prison is a disgrace to American values and international law."

Rep. Nancy Pelosi of California, the Democratic leader of the House of Representatives, added her voice to the criticism by supporting those calling for the closure of the detention camp, including Carter and Sen. Joseph Biden, the senior Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

"I think that we need a fresh start, ... a clean slate for America in the Muslim world," Pelosi told reporters.

The prison camp has been dogged by allegations of abuse since it was created in the aftermath of the Sept. 11, 2001 attacks and the subsequent US-led military action in Afghanistan.

Adding to the controversy was the disclosure last week that American guards or interrogators at Guantanamo had mishandled the Koran, Islam's holy book, by stepping on it and soaking it in water.

In one case, a guard's urine splashed through an air vent onto a prisoner and his Koran.

Bush said the prisoners at Guantanamo were treated fairly and rejected as absurd the description of it as a gulag.

"I will tell you that we treat these prisoners in accordance with international standards. And that's what the American people expect," he said.

But Pelosi's support added weight to the argument that the prison is harming the United States' image abroad.

Her comments came less than a day after Carter, a Democrat renowned across the globe for championing human rights causes, urged the United States to shut down the prison. He urged that detainees be treated fairly and given due process under the law.

"To demonstrate clearly our nation's historic commitment to protect human rights, our government needs to close down Guantanamo and the two dozen secret detention facilities run by the United States as soon as practicable," Carter said.

Biden, a Democrat from Delaware, declared the detention camp "the greatest propaganda tool that exists for the recruiting of terrorists around the world."

The Guantanamo prison, located at a US naval base on Cuba, was opened in January 2002. While many former detainees have already been released or sent back to their home countries, it still holds about 520 non-US citizens, most caught in Afghanistan and detained without charges for more than three years.

The Pentagon earlier this week ruled out any prospect of shutting down the Guantanamo detention centre and Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld appeared to be sticking to that.

Travelling in Norway, Rumsfeld told reporters: "I know of no one in the US government, in the executive branch, that is considering closing Guantanamo." He spoke within hours of Bush's comments being broadcast in the Fox News interview.

- REUTERS