The New Nation - Internet Edition

AFP, Washington

US President George W. Bush will likely keep the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists open before handing his successor the keys to the White House in January, the White House said Tuesday.

"We've long said that it won't be closed before the end of the president's term," spokeswoman Dana Perino said of the facility, reviled around the world as a symbol of heavy-handed US "war on terrorism" tactics.

"The president and his administration are working to get to a position where Guantanamo could be closed-and have been for some time," she said after The New York Times reported Bush had concluded he could not shutter the prison.

The chief challenge is where to put the detainees now held at the at the US Navy-run prison in Cuba, even as some of their home countries balk at taking them back and Washington says it fears other nations may not keep close enough tabs on them, or in other cases may mistreat their returning nationals.

Faced with human rights groups' charges of wrongly imprisoning people at Guantanamo Bay, or in its secret network of prisons in Europe, Washington has emphasized the dangerous nature of some who have been released.