German chancellor to ask U.S. to close Guantanamo prison

German Chancellor Angela Merkel will appeal to the U.S. to close the Guantanamo Bay detention center during her first visit as chancellor to Washington scheduled on Jan. 12-14, said a German magazine on Saturday.

"An institution such as Guantanamo cannot and ought not to exist for long in this way," Merkel told the magazine Der Spiegel, in an interview to be published on Monday.

"Means for a different treatment of the prisoners need to be found," she said, adding that she would raise the issue with U.S. President George W. Bush.

Berlin was pressing for the release of Murat Kurnaz, a 23-year-old German-born Turkish man, who was detained at Guantanamo for the past four years.

Kurnaz was nicknamed "the Bremen Taliban" after Bremen, a city of northwest Germany on the Weser River southwest of Hamburg, where he was born.

Source: Xinhua