LONDON, Nov. 22 (UPI) -- The U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, is an "anomaly that has to be dealt with," British Prime Minister Tony Blair said Tuesday.
The Geneva Conventions must be applied to detainees at the camp, Blair stressed. He did not have an up-to-date report that indicated whether that was the case at present, he added.
Giving evidence to senior British parliamentarians, the prime minister said that detention at the camp "has got to be brought to an end."
"This is an anomaly that has to be dealt with," he said.
The United States is under increasing criticism over its treatment of detainees at the camp, where suspected al-Qaida militants were held following the Sept. 11 attacks.
Last week the Bush administration was condemned by the United Nations after it refused to grant full access to the camp to inspectors from the U.N. Commission on Human Rights.
"The writ of international human rights does not stop at the gates of Guantanamo Bay," the UN's special rapporteur on the right to health, Paul Hunt, told reporters at an Amnesty International conference in London Friday.
