Vienna, June 21: Seeking to respond to EU concerns over human rights, US President George Bush said on Wednesday that he wanted to close the Guantanamo Bay prison for terror suspects, but gave no timetable.

Mr Bush, speaking in the Austrian capital Vienna after a summit with European Union leaders, said the inmates should be sent back to their native countries or put on trial.

“I would like to end Guantanamo,” he told a press conference, but cautioned that a way must first be found to send inmates at the US outpost in Cuba back home — mainly Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Yemen — or bring them to court.

The Guantanamo question — coupled with European criticism of CIA airplanes carrying suspects through Europe to countries where they might be tortured — has clouded EU relations with the United States in recent months.

Mr Bush said he had “explained to leaders here our desire to send them back” but there were some “who need to be tried in US courts.”

He described them as “cold-blooded killers” who will “murder someone if out on the street” and said he was waiting for the US Supreme Court to determine how they should be tried.

“We’re working on the issue,” Bush said.

Mr Schuessel said the summit here “went far beyond closing Guantanamo, because we have a legal problem, we have gray areas.”

“And there should be no legal void, not in the fight against terrorists but also not for individuals” who must be guaranteed “their individual rights and their freedom.”—AFP