Britain asked the United States today to return five British residents from Guantanamo Bay in a change of policy that may signal Prime Minister Gordon Brown is taking a more independent stance from Washington.
Foreign Secretary David Miliband sent a formal request to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice for the release of the five men, who were legally resident in Britain before their detention but are not British nationals.
The decision marks a shift from the policy of former prime minister Tony Blair's government, which secured the release of all nine British citizens held at the US prison camp in Cuba but maintained it was not responsible for detainees of other nationalities who had simply lived in Britain.
Speculation that Mr Brown, who succeeded Mr Blair in June, will steer a more independent course has been reinforced by some of his ministerial appointments and by one minister's comment that Mr Brown and Mr Bush were unlikely to be "joined together at the hip".
Britain said it was seeking the return of Shaker Aamer, a Saudi national; Jamil el-Banna, who is Jordanian; Omar Deghayes, a Libyan; Binyam Mohamed from Ethiopia; and Abdennour Sameur, an Algerian.
The Blair government had opposed a legal challenge by relatives of several of the men seeking to force London to press for their release from the US detention camp.
In Washington, State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the United States would review the British request, which was "well within the confines of our policy".
"We don't want to be the world's jailers. At the same time, we also don't want to see very dangerous people allowed to walk the streets freely so they can pose a threat to our citizens as well as others," he told reporters.