June 13 (Bloomberg) -- The suicides of three detainees in the war on terror triggered increased international pressure on President George W. Bush to close the prison at the U.S. naval base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Bush will hear new calls to shut the facility when he travels to Vienna for a European Union summit on June 21, EU External Relations Commissioner Benita Ferrero-Waldner said yesterday. ``Guantanamo should be closed,'' she told reporters in Luxembourg. ``This is an occasion to reiterate that statement.''

The new demands come after two Saudis and a Yemeni were found dead in their cells June 11, the first successful suicide attempts since the prison opened in 2002. The growing clamor may damage U.S. alliances in the war on terror, said Scott Silliman, a former U.S. Air Force lawyer who is now a law professor at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

``Because of these suicides, the British, the Australians, the Germans and the French are going to conclude that the United States is not complying with established international humanitarian law,'' Silliman said. ``That should be of grave concern to the U.S., because that sentiment could cause them to be less cooperative in other aspects of the global war on terror.''

While Bush said last week that the administration ``would like to end Guantanamo,'' closing the camp has been stymied by a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court to the war-crimes trials the military plans to hold for some detainees, and by concerns that prisoners released from the facility might be tortured by their home governments or resume terrorist activities.

`Grave Harm'

``We'd like it to be empty,'' Bush said June 9. ``We're now in the process of working with countries to repatriate people, but there are some that, if put out on the streets, could create grave harm to American citizens and other citizens of the world.''

Guantanamo has drawn international criticism since it opened to hold those described by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld as the ``worst of the worst.'' Amnesty International, the human- rights organization, has termed the prison facility ``a gulag for our times.'' Critics have accused the U.S. of using the camp to hold detainees under inhumane conditions outside the protections of U.S. law and the Geneva Conventions governing the treatment of prisoners of war.

Senator Jack Reed, a Rhode Island Democrat, said June 11 on CNN's ``Late Edition'' that the government should move ``as quickly as possible'' to close the prison once it decides what to do with the most dangerous detainees.

A Source of Concern

``As long as Guantanamo exists, it's a source of international attention and concern,'' Reed said.

Speaking on the same program, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Arlen Specter, a Pennsylvania Republican, said the deaths underscored the need to determine which of the 460 detainees being held at Guantanamo are enemy combatants and to pursue charges where warranted.

Condemnation of the prison has come from some of the closest U.S. allies. In a visit to Washington last week, Danish Prime Minister Anders Fogh Rasmussen, whose country has contributed troops to U.S.-led operations in Iraq and Afghanistan, publicly urged Bush to shut it down.

In May, the United Nations called for Guantanamo to be closed, following similar appeals by the U.K.'s attorney general, Peter Goldsmith, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel.

Of the 750 prisoners who have been held at Guantanamo, more than 250 have been released to their countries of origin, and 140 others may be in coming months.

Of the more than 300 detainees who will remain, 10 have so far been charged with war crimes by a military tribunal, and about ``two dozen others'' will be similarly tried, U.S. Army Brigadier General Edward Leacock, the deputy commander of the detention operation, said in an interview last month.

Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is scheduled to rule this month on the legality of those tribunals, which were established by Bush's executive order in the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks and have been challenged by legal and human-rights groups.

Robert Chesney, a professor at Wake Forest University School of Law in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, said ``the most likely outcome is for the bulk of the detainees to be transferred despite'' objections over how they might be treated, ``with a core group remaining in U.S. custody for war-crime trials.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff St.Onge in Washington at jstonge@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: June 13, 2006 00:05 EDT