The British, French and German envoys to Washington, on Sunday joined the UN call for closing the unpopular US detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

French Ambassador Jean-David Levitte told CNN: "Guantanamo is an embarrassment, and so it has to be solved one way or the other."

Levitte made the comments during an interview alongside his British and German counterparts.

German Ambassador Wolfgang Ischinger said: "The sooner it's closed, the better it will be for the image of the United States, not only as a military and political but also as a moral leader in the world."

The British envoy, Sir David Manning, said: "It's difficult to find the right line to draw between your duties as a government for security and safeguarding liberty, but it is clearly an anomaly and it needs to be dealt with."

UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan on Thursday urged the United States to decide on the closure of the Guantanamo Bay detention center, saying it must be shut down " sooner or later."

"I think sooner or later there will be a need to close Guantanamo. I think it will be up to the government to decide, and hopefully to do it as soon as possible," Annan told reporters after a luncheon with Security Council members.

Annan's comments came after a UN report was released in Geneva earlier Thursday calling on Washington "to close down the Guantanamo Bay detention center and to refrain from any practice amounting to torture or cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment."

Washington has rejected the UN report with US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld dismissing as "flat wrong" the calls for its closure.

About 500 terror suspects are being jailed at the US naval base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, most of whom were captured during the US-led war in Afghanistan in 2001, and are being held indefinitely without a trial.

(Xinhua News Agency February 20, 2006)