Dec. 22 (Bloomberg) -- Germany joined Portugal in voicing a willingness to take detainees from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, to aid President-elect Barack Obama’s plan to shut the camp.

Germany is considering taking some detainees and will have “intensive discussions” about what to do with prisoners considered innocent who cannot return to their home countries, German government spokesman Thomas Steg said today.

The announcement by Germany, coming two weeks after Portugal said it “will be available” to take some Guantanamo detainees, may make it easier for Obama to fulfill his campaign pledge to shut the prison, which has been the object of international condemnation and allegations of prisoner abuse.

The Bush administration has been trying to resettle about 60 detainees it believes could be released because they no longer pose a serious threat to U.S. security. Many of these detainees, seized after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, face persecution or torture if returned to their home countries, so the U.S. has asked other nations to accept them for resettlement.

“There will be prisoners who will neither want to remain in the U.S. nor will be able to return home,” Steg told reporters in Berlin. He said the considerations were humanitarian, as a way to ease the closure of the six-year-old prison should the issue of repatriation become a legal barrier.

Portugal’s Dec. 10 offer came in a letter from Portuguese Foreign Minister Luis Amado that urged members of the European Union to help resettle Guantanamo detainees who cannot be returned to their homelands.

‘Positive Steps Forward’

The statements by both European governments were hailed today in Washington by State Department spokesman Sean McCormack as “positive steps forward” in resettling more Guantanamo detainees.

“Many of these countries have previously been unwilling to work with us to either resettle, or to, in some way, detain these individuals under circumstances where they won’t pose a threat to others,” he told reporters.

There are about 250 detainees at Guantanamo, including as many as 80 that U.S. military prosecutors plan to charge with war crimes. Besides the 60 deemed eligible for resettlement, Defense Department officials say more than 100 pose too serious a security risk to be released and cannot be tried on war-crimes charges.

Different View

Legal experts say they expect the Obama administration may take a different view of the threat posed by detainees regarded by the Bush administration as too dangerous to release.

The Guantanamo Bay prison is located on a U.S. Navy base, a 45-square mile patch of land the U.S. leases from Cuba.

U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates has asked his staff to draw up a plan for closing Guantanamo should Obama order a shutdown after he takes office Jan. 20. Gates, who will stay at the Pentagon under Obama, wants to have a plan in hand in case the president-elect opts for a quick closure, Geoff Morrell, a Defense Department spokesman, said Dec. 18.

Steg said Germany considers that the U.S. and the detainees’ homelands are primarily responsible for repatriating the inmates held at Guantanamo. Germany would reject any U.S. attempts to impose conditions on accepting detainees, he said. Any transfer plan would also have to be considered by all 27 members of the European Union.

Jan. 19 Meeting

The European Union’s General Affairs and External Relations Council is scheduled to discuss the detainee resettlement issue at its Jan. 19 meeting in Brussels, said Manuel Pereira, spokesman for the Portuguese Embassy in Washington.

“I believe the European Union wants to help,” Pereira said in a telephone interview. “We want to help in any way to solve this problem and help close Guantanamo.”

Germany “would like to deal with this question when we know the concrete plans, the timeframe, of the American government” to close Guantanamo, Steg said.

German Foreign Ministry spokesman Jens Ploetner said German officials met last month with human-rights organizations and lawyers for Guantanamo inmates to discuss the prisoners’ status following any closure of the facility.

Since 2002, about 520 detainees have been transferred from Guantanamo to countries including Albania, Algeria, Afghanistan, Australia, Bangladesh, Bahrain, Belgium, Denmark, Egypt, France, the U.K., Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait and Libya.

To contact the reporters on this story: Patrick Donahue in Berlin at at pdonahue1@bloomberg.net; James Rowley in Washington at jarowley@bloomberg.net

Last Updated: December 22, 2008 15:57 EST