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Guantanamo Bay prison should be shut down, Republican senator says

US Senator Mel Martinez said the Bush administration should consider closing the Guantanamo Bay prison for terrorism suspects -- the first high-profile Republican to make the suggestion.

"It's become an icon for bad stories and at some point you wonder the cost-benefit ratio," Martinez said Friday. "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?"

Martinez, who served in US President George W. Bush's first Cabinet and is a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, made his comments after Democratic Senator Joseph Biden suggested earlier in the week that the prison in Cuba be shut down.

Bush said Wednesday that his administration was "exploring all alternatives" for detaining the prisoners.

Human rights groups and former detainees say prisoners at Guantanamo have been mistreated. The Pentagon said last week that some US personnel there mishandled prisoners' copies of the Koran, the Muslim holy book.

That disclosure followed a report in Newsweek, later retracted, that US investigators had confirmed that a guard had flushed a prisoner's Koran in a toilet. The White House blamed that report for violent protests in Muslim nations.

Amnesty International called the facility "the gulag of our time." Former US President Jimmy Carter has also said Guantanamo should be closed.

Martinez, who strongly supported Bush's efforts in Iraq during his campaign last year, also expressed concerns about progress in the war.
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