White House talking on Guantanamo trials, senators say

WASHINGTON - Two key Republican senators have said they are optimistic they can reach an accord with the Bush administration to fix the system for trying foreign terror suspects struck down by US Supreme Court.

"The collaboration processes are good. They're talking to a lot of people, including me," Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina said.

President George W Bush wants to push a bill through Congress this fall to allow trials of suspects held at the US naval facility at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, after the court said the military commissions Bush set up were not in accord with US or international laws.

Administration officials in recent congressional hearings urged Congress to simply ratify the commissions system to give it legal backing, and the White House on Wednesday offered a rough plan that Senate aides said would largely preserve its system.

But Graham and Arizona Republican Senator John McCain, who are pressing to expand suspects' legal rights under the US military justice code, said the White House now appeared more willing to negotiate.

"We have no reason not to believe we can work this out in a satisfactory fashion to us and the Supreme Court," McCain said, striking a different tone than after Wednesday's meeting with Attorney General Alberto Gonzales and White House national security advisor Stephen Hadley.

"I know what I want the final product to look like, and I think we're not that far off," said Graham, who said he met again on Thursday with White House officials.

But changes pushed by McCain and Graham might face a stiff challenge in the House of Representatives, where many Republicans say terror suspects should not be afforded the same rights as uniformed prisoners of war.

House Republicans, along with a number of Senate Republicans, also argue that giving terrorism suspects' rights against self-incrimination and ready access to counsel would impede interrogations.

Democrats largely opposed Bush's military commissions, saying they were part of a flawed system of indefinite detention and mistreatment of detainees at Guantanamo that have weakened the United States' moral standing in the world.

- REUTERS