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Merkel to press for closure of Guantanamo prison

German leader to raise the issue with Bush during U.S. visit

BERLIN: German Chancellor Angela Merkel said on Saturday that she will ask U.S. President George W. Bush during her visit to Washington to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for suspected terrorists.

After talks with leaders of her Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party in the western city of Mainz, Ms. Merkel confirmed that she would raise the topic with Mr. Bush.

``We will attempt to find common ground,'' she added.

``An institution such as Guantanamo cannot and ought not to exist for long in this way. Means for a different treatment of the prisoners need to be found,'' she told the weekly magazine Der Spiegel, which released the interview early on Saturday, two days before publication.

"Not a demand"

Ms. Merkel, who is to pay her first visit to Washington from January 12 to January 14, after she became Chancellor in November, said ``formulating demands'' was not her manner of dealing with other international leaders. But the remarks to Spiegel ``represent my views and I will express them elsewhere just as I express them here,'' she told reporters in Mainz.

The notorious Guantanamo detention centre was established by the United States at its naval base in Cuba after the September 11, 2001 terror attacks. There are hundreds of people being held there without trial. Murat Kurnaz, a Turkish national who grew up in Bremen, Germany, has been held in Guantanamo for four years because he fought in Afghanistan.

According Spiegel, Germany is pressing for his release though it would not allow him to re-enter Germany until May 2007.

Mindful that his four-year stay in jail would have made him even more radical, German Interior Ministry does not want him to return to Germany immediately for fear that he will make radical speeches in mosques, the magazine said. Kurnaz has been put on a blacklist for much of the European Union. He could only be released to Turkey initially, said Spiegel. — Xinhua

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