UK asks US to free residents from Guantanamo

LONDON, Aug 7 (Reuters) Britain asked the United States to release five British residents from Guantanamo Bay today in what analysts saw as a sign that new Prime Minister Gordon Brown is taking a more independent stance from Washington.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband sent a formal request to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the release of the five men, who had been legally residing in Britain before their detention but are not British nationals, the government said.

The decision marks a shift from the policy of former Prime Minister Tony Blair's government, which secured the release of all nine British citizens held at the U.S. prison camp in Cuba but maintained it was not responsible for detainees of other nationalities who had simply lived in Britain.

Last year, Blair's government successfully fought off a legal challenge by relatives of several British residents seeking to force London to press for their release from Guantanamo.

The Foreign Office said Miliband and interior minister Jacqui Smith ''have decided to request the release from Guantanamo Bay and return to the UK'' of the five men.

They are Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national; Jamil el-Banna, who is Jordanian; Omar Deghayes, a Libyan; Binyam Mohamed from Ethiopia; and Abdennour Sameur, an Algerian.

Britain said it welcomed recent steps by Washington to reduce the numbers of those detained at Guantanamo Bay and to move towards the closure of the detention facility.

The United States has faced strong international criticism over the indefinite detention of terrorism suspects at its naval base at Guantanamo Bay.

John Curtice, politics professor at Strathclyde University, said the request was a clear change of policy that supported expectations the Brown government would be ''rather more independent of the Us than its predecessor''.

CLOSE ALLIES Blair was George W Bush's closest ally during the Iraq war but many supporters of Britain's ruling Labour Party disapproved of his closeness to the US president.

Speculation that Brown, who succeeded Blair in June, will steer a more independent course has been reinforced by some of his ministerial appointments and by one minister's comment that Brown and Bush were unlikely to be ''joined together at the hip''.

However, a senior government source said the request for the release of the five British residents was not at all about distancing Britain from the United States.

''The reason for the change in approach is that the US are prepared to accept representations now about individuals who are not the nationals of those countries,'' the source said, adding that Washington had previously not been open to such overtures.

Opposition Liberal Democrat leader Menzies Campbell welcomed the government's move, saying in a statement it was ''belated recognition of our moral responsibility towards these men''.

The Foreign Office said discussions with Washington about the release and return of the five men may take some time.

Blair's government did make a few exceptions to its policy, securing the release this year of Bisher al-Rawi, an Iraqi citizen who had lived for many years in Britain. Al-Rawi was arrested with el-Banna, his business partner, in Gambia in 2002.

A British parliamentary report in July said the United States ignored a British request when it seized al-Rawi and el-Banna in Gambia in 2002 and sent them to Guantanamo Bay.

REUTERS SS VC1829