Guantanamo closure not in current U.S. plans

WASHINGTON — Vice President Dick Cheney, reacting to a growing chorus of calls to close the U.S. prison at Guantanamo Bay where terrorism suspects are held, says there are no present plans to do so.

"The important thing here to understand is that the people that are at Guantanamo are bad people," he said.

"I mean, these are terrorists for the most part. These are people that were captured in the battlefield of Afghanistan or rounded up as part of the al-Qaida network," he said in an interview to be aired today on Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes."

Human rights activists and some lawmakers — mostly Democrats — are pressing for the prison's closure because of allegations of torture and abuse of detainees.

Sen. Mel Martinez of Florida on Friday became the first high-profile Republican to say the administration should consider closing the prison.

"It's become an icon for bad stories, and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio," Martinez said. "How much do you get out of having that facility there? Is it serving all the purposes you thought it would serve when initially you began it, or can this be done some other way a little better?"

President Bush has said his administration is "exploring all alternatives" for detaining the prisoners.

"We've already screened the detainees there and released a number, sent them back to their home countries," Cheney said in the interview taped Friday. "But what's left is hard-core."

He said Bush and Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld have "both emphasized the importance that you need to have the capability to imprison detainees that we capture during the course of the war on terror."

"They both emphasized that. At present, there's no plan to close Gitmo. The president says we review all of our options on a continuous basis."

The prison in Cuba holds about 540 detainees. Some have been there more than three years without being charged with any crime. Most were captured on the battlefields of Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002 and were sent to Guantanamo Bay in hope of extracting useful intelligence about the al-Qaida terrorist network.

With the fate of the prison camp a leading topic on the Sunday talk shows, Sen. Chuck Hagel said the United States is "losing the image war around the world" and Guantanamo is one reason.